Solenoid Flux
by fallacies
Summary: On the eve of the 4th War, the Berserker that Matou Kariya summons to his command is instead a boy hero from the End of Days.
1. Summoning

**Solenoid Flux**  
>An Evangelion  Fate Zero Crossover  
>Snippet #1: Summoning<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Fuyuki City, 1997<strong>

Zouken blinked slowly. _This _was the 'strongest' Servant? It seemed that a full year of preparation hadn't made the boy any less of a disappointment. He allowed himself an ironic chuckle; he'd known better than to place faith in a broken instrument.

"Um ... I'm, uh, Servant Berserker," said the child at the center of the formalcraft circle. "Are you my Master?"

Kariya couldn't keep himself from gaping dumbly. To save Sakura, he needed a strong Servant - not some weak, effeminate-looking boy. And what sort of Heroic Spirit manifested in a boy's student uniform? If the kid was a hero from the modern era, Kariya hadn't heard of any who matched his description.

"Your identity intrigues, Servant," said Zouken before Kariya could make a response. "Pray tell, who might you be?"

"Uh ... my legend hasn't really come into existence yet in this era," replied the Servant hesitantly. "Even if I told you who I was, you probably wouldn't recognize my name. You could, ah, refer to me as the Third Child for now?"

The gnarled old man barked out a laugh.

"Precious, precious," he said, amused despite himself. "And why is it that Mad Enhancement isn't triggered by default?"

The Servant scratched the back of his head as if embarassed.

"I should probably apologize about that," he said.

"Apologize?" asked Kariya.

"Um ... based on the information that the Holy Grail's given me, my Mad Enhancement boosts all attributes except Luck to A-Rank or higher."

"So, what exactly is the problem?"

"It's conditional," said the Servant, expression downcast. "You won't be able to activate it with a Command Seal, because it will only manifest if I'm in mortal peril. The rest of the time, most of my attributes are E-Rank or lower. Really, I'm not much stronger than a normal human."

Kariya pulled his lips into a line. It was sounding less and less as if he had a chance at winning the war - but he'd made a promise to Sakura. There was no backing out. Not after a whole year. Tokiomi had to pay.

"I formalize the contract," he said, gritting his teeth. "I recognize you as my Servant, and I shall be your Master in this War."

The Servant nodded, and the formalcraft circle flared again before dying down. Zouken, who had looked on during the exchange with an amused smile, released a cackle.

"Well done, Kariya," he said. "I don't believe that you'll win this War, but I anticipate that your efforts shall be most amusing."

Kariya's fingernails dug into the flesh of his palm.

* * *

><p>"I shouldn't pry," said Berserker, "but, ah, do you always get on so badly with your father?"<p>

Kariya sat himself down on a dew-covered wooden bench, taking in the sight of the Mion River at night.

"That old bloodsucker hasn't been my father for a long time," he said after awhile. "If he didn't have a use for me, he'd cast me aside without a second thought."

An odd expression crossed Berserker's face, but Kariya didn't read much into it. Instead, he regarded the boy with his good eye, pushing himself to activate his senses.

Matou Kariya wasn't a trained user of magecraft, but his efforts toward becoming a competent Master of the War had won him one hard-earned trait - an astute sensitivity to supernatural energies. He'd been dimly aware of something being 'off' about his servant in the basement of the family estate, but his experiment just now proved it: Berserker did not have a Servant's presence. He felt like a completely normal human.

Kariya had heard that the Assassins possessed a class ability permitting concealment of presence, but this was a different animal. Berserker still gave off a presence, but it wasn't anywhere near as strong as Zouken's simulation of a Heroic Spirit's aura. Could this be exploited somehow?

"Hey," he said. "Is it really alright if you don't go astral? Somebody might detect you."

Berserker glanced about, seeming slightly worried.

"Um ... I don't think there's anyone here?" he said. "I can dematerialize if it makes you more comfortable, but I sort of figured that if they saw me, they would mistake me for a normal human. An enemy Master probably wouldn't be able to get an accurate read on me, I think."

It seemed that Berserker was somewhat aware of his attributes. Kariya wouldn't be able to rely on him for monstrous brute strength as he'd intended before the summoning, but there had to be some way to use this to his advantage. Maybe an ambush?

"What are your combat capabilities?" asked Kariya. "We need to start planning out our tactics."

"I don't want to disappoint you, so I'll tell you right off the bat," said Berserker. "Without Mad Enhancement, my offensive abilities are limited to things you might learn in a self-defense class. I can handle a gun if we manage to procure one, but I'm not really that good with them."

It wasn't as off-putting to hear as Kariya had imagined; after the chain of disappointments that had already occurred this evening, he'd expected something like this.

"What about Noble Phantasms, then? Do you have anything we can use?"

"No offense, but you can't supply enough prana to support my primary Noble Phantasm."

Primary Noble Phantasm? The old man had assured him that he was capable of supplying sufficient prana to satisfy the demands of most Servants in short term. What was this Noble Phantasm that he couldn't support it?

"It's nominally an Anti-Fortress Noble Phantasm the size of a building," continued Berserker, as if reading his mind. "Due to certain circumstances, I can forcibly ignore energy requirements to manifest it, but I'd rather not."

"To keep it as a trump?" asked Kariya.

"No," replied the Servant. "I'd rather not use it at all. The 'Anti-Fortress' description is only nominal. If it's manifested at full power, it would be considered an Anti-World weapon."

"Is that the only weapon that you have?"

"My secondary Noble Phantasm is a spear that can destroy bounded fields, but if it isn't used in conjunction with my first, its combat effectiveness is about equivalent to a normal spear."

Kariya sighed. The second had its uses, but neither sounded very reliable - and Anti-Fortress was already a bit on the side of overkill. Too much risk of collateral damage. However, something Berserker said caught his attention.

"You talked about your limitations in offensive abilities. What about defensive ones?"

"I'm glad you asked," the boy replied with a small, proud smile.

Holding his right hand in the air, Berserker manifested a shimmering plane of orange light - arranged, as far as Kariya could tell, in a regular hexagonal pattern. He could sense prana within the glow, but it was almost nonexistent; an enemy would probably have to be within very close range to detect it. Berserker's own odic pressure was obscured.

"A ... bounded field?" he asked.

Was Berserker qualified as a Caster? Personal bounded fields were something that very few magecraft users were capable of. The old man's friend, Araya Zouken, was said to be one of the few modern mages to have mastered such a technique.

"Similar, but not quite," replied Berserker, dismissing the field. "This is more of an ability than a Noble Phantasm, but it isn't exactly magecraft. I can do this all day without much drain, and it'd take a pretty high rank attack to breach it."

"Is there anything else you can do with it?"

As Berserker uttered the answer, a smile began to form on Kariya's face - a humorless grin with no trace of mercy.

* * *

><p>The weakest Servant of the 4th War ...<p>

**BERSERKER** / **the Third Child**  
>master: Matou Kariya<br>gender: Male  
>attribute: Chaotic Neutral<br>strength: E- (A)  
>endurance: E- (A)<br>agility: E- (A)  
>mana: C (A)<br>luck: D  
>A nameless boy-hero of the End of Days, who defended mankind from the enemy known as the Aristoteles. Though many considered him a savior within his own lifetime, he was unable to obtain any true acknowledgement from those closest to him. In the end, his fate was steeped in bloodshed and sorrow.<p>

**Skills:**

**Mad Enhancement** - Rank A: Activation conditional to mortal peril. Deactivates upon successful conclusion of conflict, followed by a recovery period of a length dependent on the Master's prana supply. During activation, Monstrous Strength, Mental Pollution, and Battle Continuation equivalent to Rank A are exhibited. A more minimal manifestation of this skill - known as **Alaya Nemesis** - may be consciously accessed, but the Servant is reluctant to activate it except under extreme circumstances.  
><strong>Territory Creation<strong> - Rank A (A++): Construction of a mobile spatial quarantine that rejects foreign phenomenon up to a low divine Rank. During Mad Enhancement, the ability gains offensive projectile properties. Shares some characteristics with Reality Marble construction.  
><strong>Divinity<strong> - Rank C: Attribute of unspecified origin, which notably does not conflict with Monstrous Strength effects during Mad Enhancement. Limited resistance against divine phenomenon.  
><strong>Information Erasure<strong> - Rank C (-): As the exact identity of the Servant was suppressed within his lifetime, he was effectively an Unknown Hero despite his legend. Perhaps (?) in consequence, it is difficult to perceive him as a Heroic Spirit even with knowledge of his status as a Servant. The effect extends somewhat to prevent the Master's Perspective ability from directly reading the attributes of the Servant's Noble Phantasms, but it is cancelled during Mad Enhancement.  
><strong>Self-Modification<strong>- Rank - (A): Enabled only during Mad Enhancement. The Servant obtains the ability to repair injuries by incorporating into his own flesh the body parts of opponents.

**Noble Phantasms:**

**The Beast** / **O-Ni System**  
>rank: B (EX)<br>type: Support (Anti-Fortress / Anti-World)  
>A monstrous cyborg capable of initiating the End of Days. Support of this Noble Phantasm is beyond the prana supply of the average magecraft user, but under specific circumstances, the Servant can force it into a self-sufficient state. Under standard functionality, the Noble Phantasm greatly magnifies the scale of the Servant's actions. In minimal manifestation, it may appear as a human-scaled personal armor during Mad Enhancement.<p>

**Lancea Longini** / **the Tree of Creation**  
>rank: C (EX)<br>type: Anti-Barrier (Anti-Fortress / Anti-World)  
>An organic red lance with a double-pronged blade; a conceptual weapon. At the Noble Phantasm's minimal level of manifestation, it is merely a polearm of uncommon robustness of construct, capable of annihilating bounded fields and certain magical phenomenon on contact. Full manifestation can only occur when used in conjunction with The Beast, whereupon the weapon becomes capable of absorbing the spirits of Aristoteles. It is an artifact central to the initiation of the End of Days.<p>

**Progressive Knife**  
>rank: - (A)<br>type: Anti-Unit  
>A knife of standard appearance. If supplied with energy, the blade vibrates at supersonic frequencies, enabling better cutting power. Full manifestation in conjunction with The Beast raises attack power substantially. Strictly speaking, however, it does not qualify as a Noble Phantasm.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>End Snippet.<strong>  
>Draft: Feb 7th 2012<p> 


	2. Involution

**Solenoid Flux**  
>An Evangelion  Fate Zero Crossover  
>Snippet #2: Involution<p>

* * *

><p>There were situations where foreknowledge could jeopardize a mission's success. Assassin knew this, and was faintly aware that the <em>Nefesh<em> had denied him specific intelligence concerning the mark. Until now, it hadn't seemed like a problem.

"Curious," he muttered to himself, studying the garden of the Tohsaka Estate.

The boundary magecraft that he'd been told to expect had collapsed, even though the gems that had anchored it remained intact - intact but empty of prana.

'I was not the only one sent?' he asked himself.

The _Nefesh_ responded in resounding negative, and Assassin narrowed his eyes beneath his mask. There was an unexpected interloper, somewhere on the grounds.

'Abort mission,' said his Master across their link. 'It seems that Archer has been engaged in combat. Find out what you can about the opponent.'

Assassin nodded, dematerializing himself.

* * *

><p>Kawamori Sayuna, age twenty-four - an attractive young woman who had worked as a maid for the Tohsaka family for over five years. Tokiomi deemed her trustworthy enough to permit her presence when he spoke to guests on matters of magecraft.<p>

Presently, she was repaying his high estimation of her with armed assault.

Gilgamesh had hoped against his better judgment that the Grail War would be worth his time, but already disappointment was setting in - and the conflict had yet to even properly begin! The girl, his opponent in this first engagement, was at best a rank amateur, and a normal human at that. It was of barely any consolation that she possessed enough martial talent to nonlethally dispatch the useless guards his Master employed. As an indicator of what to expect of the future, though, this wasn't promising at all.

"You should be more discriminating in your selection of help, Tokiomi," said Gilgamesh, easily parrying the girl's spear-thrust.

"Decent help is hard to find these days, my lord," replied Tokiomi impassively, watching the fight from the safety of the grand staircase. "That crimson lance she's using - it may be a Noble Phantasm that influences behavior. It is unlikely she's acting of her own will, and so I beg again that you refrain from using lethal attacks. "

Tokiomi was soft-minded fool, Gilgamesh was reminded - a product of this wretchedly placid backwater. It was _because_ he was refraining from lethal force that he hadn't simply opened the Gates to bombard the wench to bloody bits. An opponent of this caliber was hardly worthy of any serious attention. Could the magus truly not discern his restraint?

Still, Tokiomi was correct in judging the lance to be a Noble Phantasm. To have withstood his strikes without so much as a scratch, it would have to be - but he was certain that it wasn't related to or based on any weapon he had obtained in life. Why the aura it gave off so damnably familiar, then? It irked him mightily that he couldn't place it.

Somehow ignoring the disabling bone fracture he had purposely induced, the maid forced herself to her feet, readying her polearm. Gilgamesh made a noise of displeasure with his lips. It would have been far easier to simply execute her.

"Show yourself, puppeteer," he bellowed. "You cannot expect that this mere thrall of a girl would be sufficient to defeat one such as I!"

In response, the maid leapt at him, propelled by some unnatural strength. Gilgamesh, though, had had quite enough. With a somewhat larger fraction of his strength, he struck the lance with his sword, sending it out of her hands. Reversing his grip, he struck her in the solar plexus with his hilt. The maid collapsed like a marionette bereft of strings, and Gilgamesh regarded Tokiomi with a disdainful sneer.

"If your high regard for the wench is unfeigned, Magus, you would do well to heal her quickly."

So saying, Gilgamesh turned to examine the lance - only to catch the telltale dematerialization of a Noble Phantasm.

* * *

><p>In a small playground five blocks away, Berserker got off his swing and looked in the direction of the Tohsaka Estate with a grim expression.<p>

Kariya had instructed him to force Tohsaka's Servant to reveal his characteristics - but Berserker was insufficiently skilled with Kaworu's remote manipulation technique to turn a normal woman into a significant threat. Even with all of the changes the Third Impact had wrought in his physiology in life, completely replicating the Angels' feats of AT-Field manipulation had always been somewhat beyond him.

Berserker doubted that Kariya would truly mind the failure, but it didn't stop him from feeling useless. He'd shielded the maid from injury where he could, but allowing an uninvolved, innocent woman to be seriously hurt hadn't been his intention in the first place - it was a consequence of his inadequacy. Before the War concluded, he would have to make it up to her somehow.

Now wasn't the time, however. Pocketing his hands, he walked out the park without demanifestation, maintaining an unrushed pace. Kariya had warned him that the other participants in the War would likely be drawn to this district by the engagement, and the sight of him turning into glowing dust would compromise the advantage of his anonymity. Identification was something he couldn't risk this early into the War - not if Kariya's plans for him to pose as a Servant of a different class were to be successful.

'Poker face,' he thought, aware that his heart was still pounding from the rush of combat. 'Act normal.'

It was a pity that the Grail hadn't manifested his SDAT as a Noble Phantasm; it was something he could really use right now. Maybe he could pick one up at a store?

* * *

><p>"Assassin was unable to identify the interloper," said Kotomine into the horn of the workshop's phonograph. "He reports, though, that at the conclusion of hostilities, some sort of presence was lifted from the area. I wasn't able to detect anything of the sort myself."<p>

"Neither was I, I confess," said Tohsaka Tokiomi's voice through the horn. "It appeared to me that the assailant was being manipulated through the Noble Phantasm she held. I would presume that this removal of presence may have merely come of its demanifestation - a difference too fine to be felt by humans."

"You mentioned that the Noble Phantasm in question was a lance?" asked Kotomine. "It could be an indicator that the Lancer of this War masterminded the attack."

"Or Caster," countered Tohsaka. "It's said in Celtic legend that the witch known as Scathach was a capable wielder of the polearm. The geas magecraft she was famous for is linked to the foundations of the modern tradition of thaumaturgical puppetry."

"A cursed lance and a magus associated with polearms," mused Kotomine. "This really isn't enough to confirm our opponent's identity."

"We do know one thing for certain, though," said Tohsaka.

"And what's that?"

"The Noble Phantasm was used to collapse the security perimeter that I set up about the grounds. I can't see a reason something like that would be necessary, unless our mastermind were incapable of imposing manipulation through a bounded field."

Kotomine rubbed his chin.

"Perhaps this can be used to construct a defense ..."

* * *

><p>"I'm not paying any more than ten thousand yen for this," said Kariya. "It's been in your window since last year, and you haven't managed to sell it off. This is the best offer you're going to get."<p>

The shopkeeper, a punkish youth with blond, heavily greased hair, pulled his lips thin and gave Kariya a dangerous glare. For a long moment, their eyes locked, and Kariya thought he might get violent - but in the end, the shopkeeper backed off and sighed.

"Fine, freakshow," he said, lifting his hands in defeat. "You win. Take the damned thing and get out of here."

Kariya laid the bills across the counter and picked up his purchase. At a pained hobble, he left the antiques shop. When the door clinked shut, the shopkeeper ran a hand through his hair.

"Fuck me and my charitability," he said to himself. "A genuine bone mask used by the Hashshashin for a mere ten thousand. Pops is gonna rip me a new one."

* * *

><p>Somewhere, a black monolith appeared in an empty room.<p>

"Katsuragi indicates that an S^2 phenomenon has been detected in Japan," said a voice. "Please advise."

Moments later, several more manifested, forming a rough circle.

"The time of revelations is not yet at hand," said another voice. "We must investigate this."

"Where did the disturbance occur?"

A satellite image lit up in the center of the circle.

"The city of Fuyuki, southwest of Tokyo," replied the voice of the first monolith.

"The Einzberns' pet project, then ... Something must be done about this. Can we make use of the Overseer assigned by the Vatican?"

"If my recollection does not fail me, Kotomine Risei is a loose cannon. He cannot be trusted."

A smooth, black pulpit appeared in the empty spot at the head of the room. At the top, there was an elderly German man in a business suit, sitting with his hands folded before his face.

"Let us send Ikari," he said. "Even if she knows nothing of the truth of this world, she should be resourceful enough to contain the situation."

"A test for her?"

"Indeed."

* * *

><p><strong>End Snippet.<strong>  
>Draft: Nov 11th 2011<p> 


	3. For the Glory of Another

**Solenoid Flux**  
>An Evangelion  Fate Zero Crossover  
>Snippet #3: For the Glory of Another<p>

* * *

><p>The kitchen wasn't spotlessly clean, but it managed not to have a particularly lived-in atmosphere. The times that Kariya had been permitted to return to the condo in the past year, he'd subsisted mostly off of instant noodles and canned foods - far too drained to attempt cooking. Still, the place was clean of rotten foodstuffs and garbage, and that was enough for it to suffice as a setting for discussions of strategy.<p>

Under the lamp, a map of the city was spread out upon the dining table, with seemingly random lines drawn clear across it in yellow highlighter. At several of the conjunctions, circles had been drawn with a red ballpoint pen.

"These are the major leylines in Fuyuki," said Kariya. "Generally, to make easy use of the environmental mana that flows through them, mages choose leyline junctions as the sites of rituals and bounded fields."

Berserker, who sat at the opposite end of the table, distractedly nodded his comprehension. Kariya frowned slightly at the response, but pushed on.

"I spent the better part of last night scouting out the major junctions in the city for bounded fields," he said. "Only managed to find two noticeable constructs besides the ones at my old man's house and at Tohsaka's place." He pointed his pen at the location of the Fuyuki Church. "Here." Moving the tip south to the downtown area of Shinto, he stopped at the Fuyuki Grand Hyatt. "And here."

"The first one's where the Overseer is, right?" asked Berserker.

"Yeah," replied Kariya. "We don't need to look very deeply into that one. The other, though ... I'm guessing one of the Masters from out of town set up shop in the hotel they're staying at. It's a pretty bold move, just announcing their presence at the largest leyline junction in town."

"So, none of the other Masters have set up bounded fields, then?"

"At the obvious locations, at least." Kariya pointed at the location of his apartment, in eastern Shinto. None of the highlighter lines crossed it. "This is where we are right now. I've got a basic alert perimeter set up around the apartment building, but it's weak enough that it's barely detectable if you don't know it's there. Our other opponents are either taking the same precautions that I have, or they're situating their bases outside of city limits."

"What about finding this place using other methods, then? Can't they just look up your address in a public record or something?"

Kariya couldn't resist smiling in pride - but the dead side of his face was as unresponsive as ever, and the resulting grin was haggardly grotesque. It was amusing that a Heroic Spirit from another time could be so well-versed in the societal workings of the current era.

"I own this flat, but it isn't listed under my name. Arranged for it last year, when I found out I'd be participating in the War."

"Is that even legal?" asked Berserker skeptically.

"I'm a freelance journalist," said Kariya. "You don't survive in this trade without making a few connections where it counts."

It felt to Berserker as if Matou Kariya and Kaji Ryouji had the same air about them - melancholic and somewhat shady, but underlain by a wholehearted dedication.

"More importantly, though," continued Kariya, tapping the location of the Grand Hyatt on the map, "this person's gonna be our next target."

"Hold on," said Berserker. "Didn't you say we were going to target Tohsaka first?"

"That was the plan, but going by the way the fight went with Archer yesterday, I'm not sure we can take 'em. Best course of action in my opinion is to let somebody else wear him down."

Berserker sighed.

"My fault for performing so badly."

"It actually doesn't have anything to do with your abilities."

"Eh?"

Rather than answering, Kariya pointed at his own eyes.

"You know about the 'Master's Perspective?'"

"You mean, how you're able to visually identify opponent attribute rankings?" asked Berserker. "Wait. You were looking in on the battle through the maid's eyes like I was?"

Kariya nodded.

"Archer's base attributes were mostly in the A and B Ranks. That E Rank Noble Phantasm he was using against you definitely isn't his trump," he explained. "Point is, if he's got something A Rank or higher hidden up his sleeve, even if you went in there and managed to get yourself injured enough to activate Mad Enhancement, there still wouldn't be any surefire guarantee that you'd win."

Limply, Berserker looked down across the map. He'd wanted to be useful to Kariya, but his first engagement had done little more than expose his impotence. It really didn't seem as if dying and getting summoned as a so-called 'Heroic Spirit' had made him any more competent than he'd ever been.

"That tactic we used," said Kariya. "I think the trial run at Tohsaka's place was pretty successful. This time, we should find ourselves somebody from the senior hotel staff ..."

"No," said Berserker. The word wasn't loudly uttered, but it carried a weight of finality.

Ah, thought Kariya. That's why.

It was difficult to comprehend why a Heroic Spirit qualified as a Berserker would be so bothered by injuring noncombatants, but Kariya could work with that. Preferred it, really. Before the summoning, he himself had reservations about obtaining a mindless killing machine as a Servant. The staining of his own hands was not something he sought to prevent; he'd accepted that inevitability as a basic feature of the War. Sakura's freedom, wasn't something that he wanted to color with the blood of innocents if possible. If he fell to the level where he simply didn't care, he would be no different from Tokiomi.

Aloud, he said, "If you feel so strongly about it, we'll just have to change tactics."

Berserker seemed to lose some of his tenseness.

"Sorry," he said. "I know it's not my place."

"It's not a big deal, really. Don't worry about it. I shouldn't have ordered you to do something like that without getting your word on it first."

Uncomfortable that he'd apparently pushed Kariya into an apologetic stance, Berserker changed the subject.

"Is there anything I should know about the defenses of this place?"

"I was just getting to that," said Kariya. "The bounded field the magus set up covers the upper twenty-four floors of the hotel, and a significant amount of the airspace immediately above. Judging by the grandiosity involved, I'd say the creator's pretty arrogant. Probably holed themselves up in the presidential suite on the thirty-second floor - the top level."

"Twenty-four floors of a thirty-two story building ..." said Berserker. "If the field's keeping out intruders, doesn't that mean the hotel's losing a lot of business?"

"That's exactly the thing," said Kariya. "It's not. Regular hotel guests and staff members seem to be able to enter and exit the field without triggering any response. I'm guessing that the defensive mechanisms are keyed to higher-presence existences, like mages or familiars or Servants."

"So, what's the plan?" asked Berserker. "The Master's going to notice it immediately if I simply destroy the field."

"The Grail War is fought mostly under the cover of night. Chances are, the Master'll be resting or asleep during the day," explained Kariya, drumming the fingers of his good arm on the table. "Taking advantage of that, this engagement should be initiated at around noon. It's a bit of a gamble, but I'd like you to walk straight into the bounded field ..."

* * *

><p>On the seventh floor of a cheap business hotel in Shinto, a man and a woman played back a sequence of recorded footage on a 13-inch CTR.<p>

"What do you make of it?" asked the man.

"The delay between the initiation of attack and Archer's response was small," the woman replied. "I could accept it if he were somehow capable of sensing the puppet used by the intruder, but my familiar noticed no obvious Servant presence. It would almost seem as if Tohsaka Tokiomi were expecting an attack."

The man nodded.

"It reeks of choreography," he observed. "If the attacker were truly an opponent that Tohsaka had foreknowledge of, he could've acted to conceal the engagement and limit his Servant's exposure. Instead, we're provided with an unnecessary display ... unless the display itself served a purpose? That would be the case if Tohsaka wished for us to believe in the attack of an unknown assailant."

"The use of a Noble Phantasm suggests that the orchestrator of the attack is a Servant," replied the woman. "It is difficult to imagine that thaumaturgical puppetry of this level would be achievable by a Servant any class aside from Caster."

Pressing a button, the man rewound the footage, pausing it near the end of the conflict proper. In the blurred image, a crimson lance disintegrated into motes of light.

"It's possible that we're merely being to led to construct a hypothetical opponent," he said. "The apparent puppetry may not be puppetry at all - merely some form of suggestion. Alternatively, the puppet's behavior could be directed by an individual aside from the Servant providing the Noble Phantasm. That is to say, the weapon is merely a prop."

"But what would Tohsaka gain by fabricating the fiction of an enemy?"

"He obtains a nameless scapegoat, upon which blame for any number of heinous acts could be directed," said Emiya Kiritsugu. "An inheritor of all the sins in the world ... A perfect alibi."

* * *

><p>Long before he had given up his name and face for the hundred masks, Assassin had been an apt listener of stories.<p>

The children of the commercial quarter of his city had a tradition of gathering fortnightly in a corner of the bazaar, where an ancient blind woman would speak of the legends of djinn and magi and great warriors. His favorite tale had been of the clockwork horses that the ancient sultans had chartered - metallic steeds said to traverse the skies at marvelous speeds. The sky-carriages created by the men of this era bore little resemblance to horses, but as testaments to the power of human ingenuity, they were no less marvelous.

The station he'd requested of the _Nefesh _- demanifested atop an airport radio tower in the neighboring city - served a purpose besides satiating his fascination, however. As a harbor of entry to the land of Fuyuki from abroad, there were few locations more convenient.

On the morning after the opening of the War, Assassin's preoccupation rendered itself justified: On the furthest lane from the administrative complex, a Servant's presence entered his awareness, descending from the skies in a private craft. Flitting foward, he visually confirmed the arrival of an opponent party.

'A Servant has arrived at my location with a magus, most likely of the Einzberns,' he thought. 'Judging by the presence she exudes, she is quite strong. Without further qualification, I would judge her to be the Servant of the Sword.'

There was a silence in his mind, but Assassin could faintly sense his Master considering the information.

'If the Servant you have just now encountered is indeed Saber, she can be eliminated as a perpetrator of the attack yesterday evening,' said Kotomine Kirei across their link. 'Lancer, Caster, Rider, and Berserker remain. Prioritize the identification of the former two. What is the situation with El-Melloi?'

From within the _Nefesh_, a female voice spoke: 'The magus has completed the final touches to his stronghold as of early this morning. The defenses are of robust construction, and we are incapable of penetrating the outer layers undetected. The identity of his Servant remains unconfirmed.'

'No matter,' said the priest. 'Put a tail on the Einzbern, but maintain surveillance of the airport and the JR Station until all Servants are accounted for.'

'Understood.'

* * *

><p>Pulling along the small luggage he'd retrieved from a locker in the subway station, Berserker stepped into the palatial front lobby of the Fuyuki Grand Hyatt.<p>

Ironic, he thought, that rather than the workings of magecraft - which were empty nothings before the power of the Angels - it was simple matters like the extravagance of the hotel interior that really brought it home how alien the world before the Second Impact was. The Japan he'd known as a child had been characterized by a minimalist utilitarianism, and before his arrival in Tokyo-3, he never imagined that anyone in their right minds could condone a waste of resources purely for cosmetic purposes. Trust his father to disabuse him of his notions ...

Kariya was not physically observing this engagement. Being the heir of the House Matou, his face was known, and if Berserker were to associate with him under surveillance, it would break his valuable anonymity. They'd agreed that it would be best for the both of them to act independently in public. On rendezvous at the condo, Berserker was to manifest directly within - remaining astral within a rough seven hundred meter radius of the building's exterior.

This meant, of course, that if a given engagement required implements that were not Noble Phantasms - the contents of the luggage, for example - Berserker would have to physically obtain them from some secondary location away from the condo. It was a hassle, but that was the price of security.

Entering a restroom at the rear, he quickly confirmed that it was unoccupied, and moved a nearby floor-sign before the door to indicate that cleaning was in progress. Within, he opened his luggage and took out his first costume - a porter's uniform.

Regardless of his mental age, Berserker was physically around fourteen. It was pushing it to think that he could believably disguise himself as a full member of staff - but, squinting slightly as he checked his reflection in the mirror above the sinks, he felt like he could pull off the look of a youngish part-timer.

Back in the lobby, nobody seemed to notice anything strange as he commandeered a carriage for his one item of luggage. Pushing it into an elevator, he pressed the button to the ninth floor.

"Here goes nothing," he said to himself.

Kariya's proposed gamble rested on the assumption that the opponent's bounded field would fail to recognize Berserker as a Servant. Unlike members of the Assassin class, whose Presence Concealment was necessitated by the fact that they did, in fact, possess Servant presence, Berserker naturally exerted the same odic pressure on the environment as a normal human - far weaker than what a Servant ought to exhibit. Kariya had claimed during their experimentation that he couldn't detect anything at all when Berserker went astral.

Was that enough to fool the enemy's defenses, though? Berserker found his heart pounding harder as the number on the floor indicator began to approach his destination. If this failed, he would undoubtedly be attacked - and even if he managed to get away unscathed, their present plans would have to be rewritten from scratch ...

Six ...

Seven ...

Eight ...

He felt a strange sensation, similar to pushing through an Angel's AT-field. When it passed, the elevator door opened on the ninth floor anticlimactically. Relieved that no mystical forces rushed in to vivisect him, Berserker let out a sigh, and pushed the button for the thirtieth floor - a level occupied by an Italian restaurant called Ristoranto Skyline. It seemed that the mission would proceed as planned.

"Phase two," he said.

* * *

><p>On the rooftop, Lancer blinked.<p>

A faint, unexpected presence had just entered his Master's suite. Not a Servant. It felt human - but that was strange in and of itself. The only ones who could freely access the room were the hotel staff, and his Master had imposed a strong suggestion on the management that they were not to disturb him during the day unless there was an emergency.

Who was it, then?

Astralizing, he sank through ceiling. The sitting room was undisturbed, but the entrance to his Master's sleeping quarters had been opened, and at this short of a distance, he could sense a faint killing intent.

Lancer materialized through the door post haste, summoning his spears - but it was a moment too late. The double prongs of the intruder's lance had sunken through his Master's hand - right through the Command Seals. Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi gave off a pained scream, and Lancer felt their connection simply cut off. Furious, he fixed the enemy with a piercing glare, engraving its appearance within his mind - the skintight black gear; the blooded crimson lance; and the bone-white skull mask. His Grail-granted knowledge supplied a name, and he understood precisely how this filthy creature dared to sully the War with such underhanded tactics.

"Assassin," he spat. "I should've known."

* * *

><p><strong>End Snippet.<strong>  
>Draft: Nov 11th 2011<p> 


	4. Zabaniya

**Solenoid Flux**  
>An Evangelion  Fate Zero Crossover  
>Snippet #4: Zabaniya<p>

* * *

><p>In an electrical closet behind the Ristoranto Skyline, an aging technician cussed, moving the beam of his flashlight across the circuit breaker that serviced the hotel's security systems. Five such units were installed in the building - each situated to protect a separate subdivision of the power infrastructure. A little more than seven minutes ago, something incredibly sharp had diced this one to bits.<p>

"Locks to the guest rooms are goin' haywire," said a grainy voice from the radio in his hand. "Hard-drives for security footage are all fried too. How are things lookin' up there?"

Depressing the talk button, the technician replied, "We're gonna have to replace the breaker. It's a total loss. I'm supposin' whoever did this had a staff key, because the card-reader on the door ain't physically damaged."

There was a brief silence before the radio crackled to life again.

"Management's being unreasonable," said the voice on the other end. "Says she'll be holding us responsible for any complaints if we don't get things up and running again within the hour."

The technician sighed tiredly before depressing the button again.

"Tell her," he said, "that it's her own damn fault for switching everything over to digital."

* * *

><p>Assassin was not an enemy with whom Lancer cared to exchange words; there was nothing to be said to a low villain who had discarded honor and respect merely to attain his ends. Abruptly thrusting forward the Gae Buidhe, he directed the blade at his opponent's neck, thinking to land a critical injury before astralization could occur.<p>

The strike never landed.

The enemy Servant had delayed in raising his own lance to defend, but mere centimeters before the crimson spiral shaft, Lancer's blade-tip was met with a shimmering plane of translucent orange - a barrier as unyielding as stone. Defensive thaumaturgy? Doubtful - Assassins, in accordance to the rules of the Grail, were unqualified as users of magecraft. This was more likely a feature of the Noble Phantasm; perhaps a different expression of whatever principle it had exploited to destroy his Master's Command Seals.

'No apparent verbal invocation in either usage, though,' Lancer coolly observed, breaking the standstill and backing out of range as Assassin artlessly swung his double-pronged polearm. 'It would suggest that like my spears, the weapon has a passive or responsive effect.'

"_F- fervor ... fervor, mei sanguis_," said his Master breathily from the bed, clutching a profusely bleeding hand.

From a decorative porcelain vase by the windows, a silvery fluid oozed into the air, forming a perfect mirrored sphere - the pride of Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi; the Mystic Code _Volumen Hydragyrum_. Warily, Assassin backed away, stepping toward the wall.

Glaring upon the Servant with unquenchable rage, the pureblood steadied his voice and lowly uttered: "_Automatoportum defensio. Automatoportum quaerere. Dilectus incursio ... Scalp!_"

The surface of the sphere rippled angrily in response - and suddenly burst with countless blade-tipped tendrils, each the width of a jackknife. Initially arching outwards, their trajectories self-corrected and converged upon Assassin's location. The wall that had been behind the Servant was instantly obliterated, exposing the bedroom to the elevator hall - but Assassin had scrambled aside in time to get away with only a few scratches.

'I erred in my haste,' thought Lancer, noting the injuries. 'The effect of the Noble Phantasm is neither passive nor absolute. It requires a minimum level of attention. If Assassin cannot notice an attack, the barrier fails to respond.'

He'd intended originally to pierce the barrier with the Gae Dearg, but the unexpected weakness of the Noble Phantasm permitted him to utilize a far more _permanent_ countermeasure. Taking advantage of Assassin's preoccupation with the _Volumen Hydragyrum_, Lancer astralized and flitted to one of his blind spots, readying to again deploy the Gae Buidhe when the chance presented itself.

'Incomprehensible that a Servant so unsuited to combat would choose to stand his ground against two relatively strong opponents,' he thought, 'but these past minutes shall not be ones he lives to regret.'

Attempting and failing to impale the floating mercury with his weapon, Assassin overextended himself momentarily, opening his unarmored torso to attack. Lancer wasted no time in rematerializing and driving his yellow spear into the boy's gut. The _Volumen Hydragyrum _followed his lead, piercing Assassin with multiple tendrils.

For a moment, Lancer thought the enemy vanquished. Then, Assassin slowly turned his head. In a rough, rasping voice, he said one word.

"_Zabaniya_."

Throughout the engagement, Assassin had exhibited roughly the same odic pressure as a normal human being - something Lancer had attributed to his class ability. Now, though, the presence exuded by the smaller Servant had suddenly become something indescribably _wrong_. As if the surface of the boy's black skintight garb had taken on the characteristics of a bog marsh, the Gae Buidhe began to sink deeper, seemingly of its own accord. It dawned upon Lancer that he'd misjudged the reason Assassin hadn't merely astralized and escaped. It wasn't out of foolhardiness or some misguided pride in his combat abilities.

'He was trying to deprive us of our weapons.'

In time with his Master's panicked withdraw of the _Volumen Hydragyrum_, Lancer forcefully yanked the Gae Buidhe free of Assassin's black, viscous flesh, falling back to his Master's side. The boy Servant regarded them, and by some trick of the light, Lancer felt as if the eye-slits of his bone mask were tilted in diabolical amusement.

Assassin did not attack again. Holding the double-pronged lance behind his back, he gave a theatrical bow, and exited through the hole in the wall to the corridor beyond the suite. Moments later, Lancer felt Assassin's presence vanish entirely.

Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi was close to hyperventilating.

"P- pursue him, Lancer," he said. "This ... this insult ... We cannot let it rest ... Go forth and destroy him!"

"Lancer will be doing no such thing," said a new voice.

Kayneth Archibald's fiancee, Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri, entered from the adjoining suite, smiling predatorily.

"I haven't the patience for your moods, Sola," said Kayneth, gritting his teeth. "I am commanding Lancer as his Master, and you shall not interfere."

Sola bared the back of her right hand. On her skin, a stylized crimson seal had manifested.

"I'm afraid you're no longer his Master, dear."

* * *

><p>In the basement of the Hyatt, Berserker removed Kariya's bone mask and the remains of the Assassin costume from the basket of a laundry chute, haphazardly shoving them into a cloth knapsack. Through with his task, he allowed himself to collapse against a wall, experimentally brushing his hand to the injury on his stomach. Wincing slightly at the pain, he sighed when his palm came away wet with blood.<p>

It wasn't a wound he couldn't forcibly heal, but it definitely wasn't regenerating as usual - most likely, because of some curse effect imposed by Lancer's Noble Phantasm. Purging and reconstituting the damaged flesh the way the Angels did it would consume a large portion of his energy stores, and they were already significantly depleted from the Leliel trick he'd pulled during the fight. Any more than this, and he would be burning through prana faster than Kariya could comfortably provide.

He wondered if he'd be able make it out of the hotel without being noticed by enemy familiars in this state.

'Do you feel any pain when you're astralized?' asked Kariya over their link.

'Much, much less,' thought Berserker. 'Why?'

'Don't bother going home,' said Kariya. 'Hide the costume somewhere, and then rest up while astralized. I'll call you in a few hours.'

'Did you plot out our next step already or something?'

'Yeah,' said Kariya. 'If you're willing to go along with it, I'm making my debut in the War tonight ...'

* * *

><p>Crossing the ticket gate at the Fuyuki JR Station, a brown-haired young woman pulled along her luggage, searching the crowd in the station lobby for her party.<p>

"Ms. Ikari?" asked a female voice. "Ms. Ikari Yui?"

She turned. The person greeting her was a slightly older woman, who had the looks of a foreigner about her - possibly half-Japanese and half-Caucasian.

"That would be me, yes," she said.

"You're a lot younger than I imagined," replied the older woman, laughing a bit awkwardly. "My name is Kyoko Sohryu-Zeppelin, and I'm an intern with the local branch of the Artificial Evolution Concern. I'll be your go-to person during your stay with us."

Behind Kyoko's skirt, a red-haired little boy peeked at Yui, who waved her hand at him.

"Hey," she said to him, smiling. "What's your name?"

Shyly, the boy ducked his face behind Kyoko.

"Let me introduce you," said Kyouko. "This is my son, Shirase Sohryu-Zeppelin."

* * *

><p><strong>Timeline A: Evangelion Canon<strong>  
><strong>1992<strong>: At age 18, Kyoko receives artificial insemination. Sperm Donor is Japanese. Shirase Sohryu-Zeppelin is born.  
><strong>1997<strong>: 4th Grail War. Shirase goes missing shortly before the Fire of Fuyuki. Later, presumed dead. Kyoko falls into depression.  
><strong>2000<strong>: Katsuragi Contact Experiment / 2nd Impact  
><strong>2001<strong>: Kyoko receives artificial insemination for the second time. Asuka Sohryu-Zeppelin is born.  
><strong>2002-2003<strong>: After dating for some time, Kyoko marries an American by the name of Langley. Becomes involved in development of Evangelion Unit-02.  
><strong>2005<strong>: Kyoko goes insane in activation experiment. Commits suicide.

**Timeline B: FSN Canon**  
><strong>1997<strong>: 4th Grail War. Shirase goes missing shortly before the Fire of Fuyuki. Later, presumed dead. Kyoko falls into depression.  
><strong>2000<strong>: Katsuragi Contact Experiment does not occur.  
><strong>2001<strong>: Kyoko receives artificial insemination for the second time. Asuka Sohryu-Zeppelin is born.  
><strong>2007<strong>: 5th Grail War.

* * *

><p><strong>End Snippet.<strong>  
>Draft: Nov 12th 2011<p> 


	5. In that year, she was still a child

**Solenoid Flux**  
>An Evangelion  Fate Zero Crossover  
>Snippet #5: In that year, she was still a child ...<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Prague, 1988<strong>

A hundred and fifty meters beneath the construction site of the Zizkov Television Tower, rows of illuminated plexiglass vessels lined the floor of a massive chamber - otherwise unlit. Buoyed amid the orange fluid within them, eyeless fetuses - human in appearance, despite their deformity - slightly twitched as a balding, hook-nosed man crossed the steel catwalk above. On a platform suspended from the ceiling at the center of the chamber, an elderly German gentleman awaited, seated at the far end of a meeting table. His eyes were obscured by the circular, mirrored-black lenses of his wirerimmed sunglasses.

"The purging is concluded as you have ordered," said the hook-nosed man in a slightly accusatory tone, seating himself opposite of his host. "Ikari's Crest has been returned to the Dead Sea, and as of two hours from now, payment shall be rendered to the Magus Killer in full."

The German thinned his lips.

"Do not think that I am without regrets," he said solemnly. "Ikari Hashidate was a good man, but in the end his compassion blinded him to necessity. If not for his continued interference in the preparations for the Balkan scenario, this situation could have been avoided."

Defeatedly, the hook-nosed man sighed.

"What of the now-vacant Thirteenth Seat?" he asked. "Shall we groom Ikari's heiress to succeed him?"

"No. The seat shall remain vacant in his memory. I do not deny that the girl exhibits the natural capacities of an ideal candidate, but already she resembles her father too much in character, and we have no need for another Judas. She is a resource best applied to a different function."

"You have something in mind?"

"La Donna dell'Apocalisse," said the German. "Come the time of revelations, the world shall itself demand that we cast one of our own to this role. I can think of no better choice than she ..."

* * *

><p><strong>Tokyo, 1988<strong>

The first time Kiel Lorenz spoke to Yui, it was several weeks after her father's funeral. She was eleven years old.

"You have recovered from your injuries, I hope?" he asked, noting her eye-patch and the cast on her right arm.

Sullenly, she nodded.

"You were my father's superior?" she inquired. "He often spoke of you."

"Not his superior, no," replied the foreign man. "We were merely friends and equals. In accordance with the terms of his last will and testament, I have been requested to assist in the execution of his estate, and until such a time that you have attained age of majority, I shall be serving as your legal guardian."

It struck Yui that unlike the adults that had tended to her after the incident, Chairman Lorenz did not unnecessarily simplify his language when speaking to her - much like her father. She decided that she didn't dislike him.

"I am to understand that you are quite talented in the sciences," he said, "but your instructors at academy are of the sentiment that you do not apply yourself. Do you feel yourself unchallenged by the content of your courses?"

Yui shook her head in negative.

"I see no purpose in meeting my instructors' approval," she said. "The academy's curriculum is designed merely to communicate elementary concepts, and is devoid entirely of practical application on any front. The sort of science we are taught cannot be of aid to anyone."

For a long moment, Chairman Lorenz considered her response with a serious expression.

"Perhaps," he said after a time, "you would benefit from approaching your education from a slightly different perspective."

"How so?"

"I agree that the marks you receive in academy are empty of value, but within society, they are a means to the end of obtaining the resources you would need to implement your practical science. Even if you find no worth in the motions your instructors force you to follow, the exercise is ultimately beneficial to your goals."

Yui's frowned.

"That feels like a dishonesty, though," she said.

The reflective surface of the foreigner's sunglasses gleamed as he turned his head to look out into the garden.

"Your father did well in teaching you the worth of honesty," he said, "but in truth, all the world is a stage - and it is built in such a manner that no man, woman, or child can survive without bearing the weight of a mask. Carrying out our true objectives is impossible unless we are prepared to act upon beliefs that are not our own."

This was Yui's first lesson in the principles of the Philosophers.

* * *

><p><strong>Tokyo, 1995<strong>

Aside from maintaining a grade point average within ten percentiles of the top of her class, Ikari Yui at age eighteen was an unremarkable college freshman. In truth, she bothered to expend a minimal effort toward academics merely as a part of her obligations toward Chairman Lorenz. Her energies were otherwise invested largely in the internships she had obtained at assorted laboratories.

Yui's major of choice was molecular biology, but the research she most frequently participated within was far afield - in the relatively young discipline of Metaphysical Biology, the exploration of life beyond the material domain.

Experimental work in physics in the late 1970's confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that analogues to biochemical structures existed within a dimensionally higher order reality - objects that were controversially termed "souls," and representable as a waveform structure. Interest in the properties of these analogues entered the vogue of mainstream academia in 1982, when Fuyutsuki Kouzou - a professor at the University of Kyoto - demonstrated that interactions could be achieved between "souls" and the physical realm.

The world itself, it emerged, possessed a higher-order analogue of a much higher waveform frequency than any cellular organism. Electronically stimulating the brain of a rat to modulate its soul toward the frequency of the world created a spooky-action phenomenon within the environment - a very weak, spherical electromagnetic field roughly two meters in diameter, centered about the rat's body. The magnitude of the 'synchronization event' was mechanically measurable via the disturbance of magnetically shielded LCL.

LCL - or Link Connect Liquid - was the simplest protein polymer that could carry a soul. It was, incidentally, highly sensitive to soul waveform modulation, and would molecularly rearrange itself in varying manners per synchronization events of different magnitudes and locations. During the 1980's, the United Nations backed scientific initiative AEC collaborated with the government of Japan - the birthplace of Metaphysical Biology - to employ LCL in a nationwide monitoring grid, intended to observe synchronization events geographically. Several years later, Katsuragi Keima of the University of Tokyo began to further refine the response time and sensitivity of the grid; adopting the colors of the spectrum to code frequencies, and forging a new theoretical model that mathematically represented soul waveforms in three dimensions - as a spiraling coil, or a solenoid. Coded frequencies came to be described in terms of the efficiency and fidelity with which they could influence physical phenomenon.

Type:Sepia to Type:Red events - low enough in magnitude to be regarded as background noise - were in fact fairly rare, Katsuragi found; he referred to them as 'poltergeists,' and cursory investigations conducted by the AEC revealed that this wasn't an inaccurate terminology. Even more infrequently, however, a Type:Yellow would briefly manifest, and LCL disturbance on such occasions was exponentially higher. Katsuragi began to wonder what sort of phenomenon a creature capable of initiating a Type:Blue event could induce - what sort of impact a synchronization at the frequency of the world itself could have.

Ikari Yui, who served as an intern at Katsuragi's laboratory, regretted that - as a daughter of the Philosophers - she could not impart the knowledge she possessed to her adviser: The lifeform he had so energetically hypothesized of had long been known to mankind.

Since time immemorial, they had been called Angels.

At the time, Yui did not suspect that the Philosophers had systematically concealed knowledge from her as well. The "low-efficiency" Type:Red events that she and the rest of Katsuragi's staff had been instructed to dismiss as background noise were known by another name elsewhere in the world: Magecraft, the science of Mysteries.

* * *

><p><strong>Fuyuki, 1997 - Present Day<strong>

A map of the Fuyuki metropolitan area lit the multi-panelled wall monitor at AEC-Fuyuki. Yui's eyes widened at the random splotches of red that covered the entire city.

"How long has it been like this?" she asked. Had an intelligence lockdown been implemented? She should've been informed of disturbance of this scale.

"A very, very long time," replied Kyoko, thumbing through a stack of printouts attached to a clipboard. "The database would be able to tell you when precisely the Type:Reds started to turn up. We typically see more of them at night."

"So, something's happening in the city?"

"Nothing overtly obvious aside from the recent serial killings, but ..." Kyoko's expression betrayed a bit of anxiety. "Until word came that you would be coming here to organize a response effort, the higher-ups gave us explicit orders not to look too deeply into it." She handed the clipboard she'd been holding to Yui, and said, "I was told that you would want to see this"

Yui flipped through the documents, quickly organizing the data in her mind. Apparently, four distinct Type:Yellow signatures and one Type:Green had regularly manifested in the course of the past several weeks. There was another that had appeared roughly a year prior, but it had since vanished. In the last three or four days, a Type:Cyan - the target she'd been directed to capture - had exhibited itself intermittently, and had on two instances shifted toward Type:Blue.

There really wasn't much information to go on - and Yui was beginning to suspect that the dearth of detail in her orders was entirely intentional. The Philosophers were testing her capabilities. They wanted her to acquire knowledge of the situation with her own skills, and to resolve it according to her own judgment.

"Is there something wrong?" asked Kyoko.

"No, it's nothing," Yui replied, returning the clipboard to her with a smile. "I'll be needing somebody to help me unload the equipment that arrived earlier. You think you could arrange that?"

"Sure thing."

As the older woman left the room, Yui closed her eyes and gripped the locket that hung from her neck. She would not disappoint Father. She would not disappoint Chairman Lorenz.

* * *

><p><strong>Prague Association<strong>:  
>One of the larger magecraft associations under the Sea of Astray, specialized in the traditional study of alchemy - the transmutation of matter and energy, with focus toward the production and maintenance of life. The Einzbern family is said to practice alchemy of the Prague School. The Association is led by the <em>Philosophers of the Throne <em>- a body of elders primarily interested in the practical application of their collective resources to temporal governance of world affairs.

**Golem of Prague**:  
>A monstrous stone humanoid created in the 16th century by the Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, an important figure of the Association. Upon deactivation, its remains were entombed in the graveyard that is the current site of the Zizkov Television Tower. In the year 2001, the Golem-like "Tower Babies" statues were commissioned to the site in memory of those who had lost their lives in the 2nd Impact. In fact, these humanoid creations may be defensive automatons crafted by the <em>Philosophers<em>.

**La Donna dell'Apocalisse**:  
>"The Woman of the Apocalypse" - a central figure of the Revelations of Saint John the Divine, which described her thus: "A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. And being with child, she cried travailing in birth: and was in pain to be delivered." A similar character appears within the Dead Sea Scrolls.<p>

**Fly Me to the Moon**:  
>A popular song published in 1954 by Bart Howard. The lyrics to the first stanza are, "Fly me to the moon  Let me play among the stars / Let me see what spring is like / On Jupiter and Mars / In other words, hold my hand / In other words, baby, kiss me." Beyond the face meaning, it is difficult to discern if the author intended the lyrics to be referential.

**Magus Killer**:  
>A legendary assassin, whose final target was a respected scientist by the name of Ikari Hashidate.<p>

**UN-SEELE**:  
>A security evaluation committee within the United Nations.<p>

**UN-AEC**:  
>The United Nations Artificial Evolution Concern. A biosciences research initiative backed by the United Nations, intended to explore the practical applications of genetic engineering and related disciplines for the betterment of humanity. A primary contributor to the development of the N^2 Warhead, which was based upon principles outlined by Katsuragi Keima's Super Solenoid Theory. Following the 2nd Impact, it became the parent body of UN-GEHIRN, and later UN-NERV.<p>

**Black Barrel**:  
>A conceptual weapon in the form of a rifle, thought to impose the concept of lifespan termination upon its targets. Said to be held by Atlas Academy at Alexandria, Egypt. For reasons unknown, it is also referred to as the Lancea Longini.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>End Snippet.<strong>  
>Draft: Nov 18th 2011<p> 


	6. Casses Circumdant I

**Solenoid Flux**  
>An Evangelion  Fate Zero Crossover  
>Snippet #6: Casses Circumdant I  Opening Salvo

* * *

><p><strong>08:59 PM<strong>

Despite the collapse of the Japanese asset bubble, it wasn't a matter of debate that Shinto had grown wealthier and more heavily urbanized over the past decade. The recession, however, had not left the ward entirely untouched; and the south-western bloc of the business district - a ten minutes' walk from the Grand Hyatt - was now a no-man's land of derelict office buildings and public infrastructure that had fallen out of maintenance. With the police advising a soft curfew in response to the recent serial killings, the originally sparse pedestrian traffic in the area had fallen to a nil.

Approaching the center of an empty street, Kariya winced as the worms relayed a response from an insect familiar he'd sent out earlier.

"It looks our friend from the hotel is getting ready to unleash whatever it is he has planned for tonight," he said. "We should probably get started as well."

Berserker manifested beside him, very obviously attempting to conceal a grimace as he clutched at the crimson stain on the side of his uniform shirt. Kariya bit his lower lip. In an ideal world, the sort of pain that was his nightly companion would afflict only the deserving - but reality was far from kindly, and until the War came to its close, it would be Kariya's lot to serve as an author of suffering. He dared only to hope what he was putting Berserker through would amount to some good in the end.

"Are you sure you're alright with the plan?" he asked. "If not, we can just turn in for the night."

"I'm fine. Really," replied the Servant in a strained voice, turning toward him. "Let's just do this."

From the pocket of his jacket, Kariya removed and unsheathed a combat knife with an oddly designed hilt.

"I'm sorry about this," he said.

Gripping the blade with both hands, he drove it into Berserker's gut.

* * *

><p><strong>09:13 PM<strong>

Atop the superstructure of the Fuyuki Bridge, Waver Velvet abruptly ceased in his whining, turning his head toward the Grand Hyatt in stark shock. Rider, who wasn't quite so attuned to the energies of magecraft, noticed something as well - a sharp incline in the concentration of atmospheric mana.

"Th- this bounded field ..." said Waver, eyes widening. "H- he's ... he's actually developed a working implementation ..."

It had been the subject of a treatise only recently delivered by Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi - that, utilizing the spread of a leyline network, a standard bounded field could be imposed with a nontraditional orientation that he termed the _Casses Circumdant_, propagating the influence of the controlling magus over much larger region. The conceptual groundwork that the paper established was indisputably solid, but logistical difficulties and the nearly inhuman focus required to regulate the construct placed its realization and use well within what the Clock Tower regarded to be the realm of the theoretical - something that may have been achievable in the Age of Divinities, but no longer.

This "purely theoretical" existence was now in the process of unfolding itself before Waver Velvet's senses - blooming like a nightmarish flower of death.

Rider set his bottle of wine on the surface of the bridge frame and snapped his fingers besides Waver's ear, jolting Waver to attention.

"The Persians have a saying, boy," he said to the frightened magus. "'If you can think of nothing but defeat before you even draw your blade, the war has already been lost.'"

"D- Didn't the Persians lose to you?"

"Bah! Don't stress the details!" said the large man, chuckling heartily before turning businesslike. "Going by your reaction, though, I'm supposing that whatever sorcery that was just now isn't good news for us. Is there anything I should know about the situation?"

Waver forced himself to take a deep breath and slowly exhale before speaking.

"Did the Grail provide you with any background on radio broadcasts?" he asked. "Like what our television receives?"

"Somewhat," said Rider. "It's quite the marvel, I think. Would've made field command far simpler if we had it in my day."

"I'm oversimplifying," said Waver, "but the leylines in this city are being used to broadcast and receive signals. Within a certain distance of any line, the spellcaster can sense things, and use the broadcast to manipulate all of his familiars as if they were part of his body."

"Can't you do the same? With those pigeons of yours, I mean."

"That's nowhere near the same scale. Anyone can handle one or two familiars without a problem, but once the numbers get beyond ten or twenty, it starts to put a real a strain on the mind. It's like having that many more arms and hands and being forced to control every finger at the same time. The spellcaster that we're dealing with can do it perfectly - probably without too much effort."

"And about how many familiars are we talking about, here?"

Waver worriedly glanced in the direction of Shinto.

"S- Several hundred, at least," he replied, "If we were in range of a leyline right now, the spellcaster could have them swarm us like insects at will. There's no way we can defeat an enemy like this ..."

Rider's face took a stern cast at his words, and Waver was afraid that he might have accidentally caused offense. He was surprised when the large man suddenly cracked a toothy smile and flicked him in the forehead.

"What was that for!" shouted Waver, clutching the reddening spot above his brow.

"Insects indeed!" exclaimed Rider, bellowing with laughter as he stood to his full height. "If a mere thousand insects could bring us low, I would be unworthy of my title as the King of Conquerors! You, my boy, are overconcerned for all of the wrong reasons!"

"Wr- wrong reasons? Our enemy is Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi! He's the sort of genius that only turns up once a century!"

"And I'm the sort of genius that only turns up once every half a millennium," said Rider. "That makes me at least fives times the man he is." He lifted Waver to his feet by the back of his sweater. "I'm telling you, the familiars are nothing to worry about. Tactically, the advantage this sorcery gains him is a means of potentially tracking our current position - and if you think about that for half a moment, you'll realize that it doesn't matter a whole lot unless he can locate the home of our host. Even then, what's the worst he can do? Send his Servant at us?"

"If you're so confident that we can defeat him, shouldn't we go and eliminate him right now? The fact that he can have all of this intelligence on us probably makes him the most dangerous Master ..."

Rider made a scoffing noise.

"Unless it's Caster we're talking about," he said, drawing his sword, "it isn't inherently meaningful for me to directly combat some insecure two-bit magus who hides behind hundreds of familiars. No - we'll just ignore him until he starts to make a nuisance of himself."

"What?"

Rider swung his blade, cutting a glowing arch in the air - which exploded with energy. Divine bulls charged through the gap, drawing forth the Wheel of Heavenly Might - Rider's chariot, the Gordius Wheel.

"I've found us a front-row seat to what might just be the first true engagement of this War," said Rider with a wide grin. "Are you coming?"

* * *

><p><strong>09:18 PM<strong>

By force of suggestion, they had hastily obtained a fully furnished short-term apartment as a safehouse, and concealed the entire building in less obtrusive defenses than the 'fortress' Kayneth had devised for the hotel. It didn't have quite the trappings of luxury as their former lodgings, but better that they were inconvenienced than killed by compromised security.

Alone in her new living room, Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri leaned back into the soft cushions of the couch, holding her right arm above her. The crimson Command Seals that now adorned the back of her hand were beautiful to her eyes - but not so satisfying as she had imagined.

"Why don't you understand?" she asked of the air.

For all of her blue-blooded lineage and highborn bearing, Sola-Ui was a magus of middling talent and little true interest in furthering herself. Complicated family politics had landed her as a pawn in a power play against her father soon after birth, and she'd spent her childhood being harshly ingrained with the skills of a potential heir to the family Crest - aware that she was a mere tool to the ambitions of her paternal uncle. Perhaps as a result of her upbringing, in the years following her uncle's untimely death and her brother's succession as the heir official, she'd offered no real resistance to her father's plans for a political marriage to the House El-Melloi.

Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi was an arrogant man-child who, by virtue of inborn talent and luck, had grown to adulthood without knowing a single shred of humility. To Sola-Ui, he was miraculous existence, on par with a virgin mother pure of Original Sin - and often, she thought that his personality would've been much improved if his all-too-doting mother had only beaten him as a boy. Still, Kayneth Archibald was not atypical of the men she'd known in her life, and at her father's urgings, she'd resigned herself to become his bride.

Then came the War of the Holy Grail, and the summoning of Diarmuid Ua Duibhne as the Servant of the Lance.

Diarmuid was chivalrous and polite and kindly - and every bit the gentleman that Kayneth Archibald merely claimed to be. He was the only male who'd ever treated Sola-Ui as her own person, rather than as a tool or just another pretty face. He respected her. He actually respected her.

For the first time, Sola-Ui came to know conviction: She knew the function of a tool intimately, and it was unbearable - unacceptable - that a good man like Diarmuid would be consigned to the fate of servitude that she had suffered. That his Master was her fiance was doubly offensive; a soulless meritocrat like Kayneth Archibald would never know Diarmuid's true worth.

Sola-Ui had resolved that she would find a way to save him.

Today, by the actions of Assassin, she had obtained a means to act upon her sole conviction. As if responding to the voice of her heart, the Grail had blessed her with the right to Diarmuid's service. Her first act as Master had been to threaten Kayneth Archibald with the expenditure of a Command Seal - making clear that she would order Diarmuid to end his life if didn't surrender all claim to the Grail to her.

Then, everything had gone wrong. Exactly opposite of what she'd imagined, Diarmuid had not been happy at all that she'd ended his servitude and humiliation. He'd instead berated her for acting honorlessly, and gave the ultimatum that he would only accept her as a Master if she swore to act as Kayneth Archibald's proxy. If he discovered that she had gone back upon her word, he would see her parted with her arm.

"What did that scumbag ever do to deserve your loyalty, Diarmuid?" asked Sola-Ui.

Picking up a pillow from the couch, she held it against her breasts, hugging it tightly.

"Why can't you see that I'm doing this because I love you?"

* * *

><p><strong>09:11 PM<strong>

In body, Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi faced the evening breeze on the rooftop helipad of the Grand Hyatt. His consciousness, however, was not entirely present. By artifice and sheer skill, he had momentarily become at one with the metropolis - spreading himself to the expanse of the countryside to derive sensory feedback from the leylines. In his present state, even the Presence Concealment of an astralized Assassin would not permit from escape from his clairvoyance.

The _Casses Circumdant _was not a feat of control that could be attempted without thaumaturgical talent at least equivalent to Kayneth's own - and certainly not without soundness of mind and body. Tonight, however, the throbbing pain in his bandaged right hand and the rage that utterly filled his being provided no inhibition to the effect of the spell. Rather, they honed his responses, giving him a single-minded focus.

Setting the seven-hundred odd wraiths that he'd bound to his command to automatic defense against entities of irregular odic pressure, he'd directed all of his remaining faculties to the identification of the Masters and Servants - extending his senses well beyond the range of his familiar control. Even if it killed him to do so, Kayneth would locate the Master of Assassin and make him pay for the insult that had been dealt.

Of the five other Masters and Servants:

Already, Kayneth had confirmed the Master of Berserker - a wretched, deformed scion of the House Machir, fittingly loitering about the city's slums with his Servant. It was pitiful that one of the Twelve Houses of Judea could fall so low.

At the Tohsaka Estate, Archer was demanifest, and his Master was nowhere within Kayneth's field of detection. Kayneth hadn't been able to closely observe the attack upon the manse the night previous, but as Tohsaka Tokiomi was presumably absorbed in tracking the perpetrator, it was a matter that could be dealt with later.

The Einzbern Master at the seaside was a woman, somehow capable of supplying energy to her Servant - Saber - while suppressing the telltale odic leakage that marked her as a participant of the War. Kayneth would attribute such a feat to talent, but it was wasted; the woman too closely accompanied her Servant, and seemed to have no sense of subterfuge.

Caster was a mutated creature with fish-like eyes, currently traveling along the sewer system with his Master - a plain young man who lacked the presence of a Magus. Not much of a threat, Kayneth judged.

The Master of Rider was none other than Waver Velvet, participating in the War on the merit of a stolen catalyst. It incensed Kayneth that the lowborn brat would dare show his face, but punishment could wait; the boy hadn't the talent to properly reign in Rider, and that neutered him as an immediate threat.

The Master of Assassin was easy enough to find, surprisingly - and auspiciously unaccompanied by his Servant.

Of the Servant in question, however ...

Kayneth presumed initially that he was mistaken, but fine-tuning his senses and performing a second pass, he realized that it hadn't been his imagination. Assassin was not one servant. Assassin was eighty extremely weak energy signatures, demanifested across the city.

'The Hundred-Faced Hassan,' he thought to himself. And each iteration was potentially as strong as the one that he and Lancer had fought. It confirmed within his mind that Assassin was the greatest threat of this War. But why had such a being been summoned to the service of an agent of the Vatican?

No matter, he thought. The enemy had sullied the sanctity of the war, and dealt unforgivable insult. The motives involved mattered little, and punishment was the only possible reply.

Contracting the majority of his consciousness to his flesh, he continued, "The target is a young priest, presently at a chapel to the west of the Miyama Shopping District. Assassin is not presently at his side. You know what to do."

"By your command, Master," said Lancer, astralizing from where he'd knelt.

Kayneth permitted himself a brief reprieve from his exertions upon Lancer's departure, but it was no sooner than he relaxed that he was suddenly aware of a Master's presence at the door of the stairwell. A deliberately slow clap met his ears as he turned.

"A most brilliant performance, Lord El-Melloi," said his visitor - an Asian man wearing a fine Italian suit. "Nothing less than what I expected of a first-rate magus."

He'd avoided detection, Kayneth realized, by temporarily deactivating all of his prana circuits; even now, the man's odic circulation was in the process of gradually recovering.

"Tohsaka Tokiomi, I presume?" he asked. "Rather presumptive of you to approach me without your Servant. For your sake, I do hope that you haven't the intention to battle."

At Kayneth's mental order, the wraiths that guarded the rooftop gained visibility - manifesting by the dozens until they encircled the building entirely. Tohsaka Tokiomi responded with no fright or panic. Instead, he calmly raised his arms, assuming a stance that Kayneth vaguely recognized as belonging to a Chinese martial art.

"I have no need to bother Archer with trivial errands that I myself can resolve," said Tohsaka, smiling pleasantly. "I'm here to bid you welcome to the Orient, Lord El-Melloi. I hope that you'll enjoy the remainder of your stay with us."

* * *

><p><strong>Omake #1: Fujimura Dojo, Issue 1<strong>

**ISKANDER-SENSEI and WAVER appear, standing in the training hall of a familiar dojo. ISKANDER-SENSEI is wearing an extra-large kendo hakama and holding across his shoulder a shinai, proportioned to his body. WAVER, standing beside him, is dressed in a short-sleeved white gym shirt, a pair of bloomers, and long knee-socks. On the front of his shirt is a name sticker with "Weibaa~" written in large, sloppy hiragana.**

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>Welcome to yet another issue of Fujimura Dojo!<em>  
><em>I, Iskander-Sensei, shall be your substitute<em>  
><em>trainer on this fine day! Standing beside me<em>  
><em>is my cutest disciple and assistant, Waver-<em>  
><em>chan!<em>

**WAVER glances down at his attire, and his face reddens in anger and embarassment.  
><strong>

**_WAVER:_**  
><em>W- w- what's the meaning of this, Rider! Why<em>  
><em>am I wearing bloomers! Weren't we just on<em>  
><em>top of that bridge!<em>

**ISKANDER-SENSEI laughs heartily, slapping WAVER heavily on the back.  
><strong>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>Your attire is nothing to be ashamed of,<em>  
><em>Waver-chan! It is the traditional battle garb<em>  
><em>that the Orientals assign to those of your<em>  
><em>role and station! And to answer your question,<em>  
><em>you're here because you Bad Ended!<em>

**_WAVER:_**  
><em>M- my role and station?<em>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>I believe that the scholars and gentlemen of<em>  
><em>this nation describe those with your<em>  
><em>characteristics as 'tsundere loli magi.'<em>  
><em>There was some talk before the beginning of<em>  
><em>the Grail War that your lines should be voiced<em>  
><em>over by Kugimiya Rie.<em>

**_WAVER:_**  
><em>Baka Baka Baka! Stop talking all this<em>  
><em>nonsense, Rider! There must be an explanation<em>  
><em>for this! Are we inside a Reality Marble or<em>  
><em>something? And what do you mean Bad Ended?<em>

**ISKANDER-SENSEI shoots WAVER an awkward grin.  
><strong>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>That would be my fault, Waver-chan. When I<em>  
><em>swung my sword earlier, you were accidentally<em>  
><em>knocked off the bridge!<em>

**_WAVER:_**  
><em>I ... I'm dead? You killed me!<em>

**WAVER collapses to his knees, and tears begin to form in the corners of his eyes.  
><strong>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>But don't worry! This tutorial is intended to<em>  
><em>explain to you exactly what you did wrong! If<em>  
><em>you try harder, next time, you'll perform<em>  
><em>better! Once we're through, just open your<em>  
><em>most recent save and reload!<em>

**WAVER glares at ISKANDER-SENSEI, who has broken into chuckles.  
><strong>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>In any case, it's time for mail call!<em>

**A HAND reaches up from below the CAMERA, holding an envelope, which ISKANDER-SENSEI takes with a nod. Tearing it open, he removes the letter within.  
><strong>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>Let's see now ... this letter is from Aida<em>  
><em>Kensuke-kun of Tokyo-3. His question is, "How<em>  
><em>does Archer have so many goddamned Noble<em>  
><em>Phantasms! I just can't defeat him, and I'm<em>  
><em>already Level 52!"<em>

**_WAVER:_**  
><em>Wait, Archer? Didn't he only use that one<em>  
><em>crappy Noble Phantasm against the maid?<em>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>Kensuke-kun's farther along than you in the<em>  
><em>plot, Waver-chan. You need to work harder! But<em>  
><em>to answer the question, most of these Are-Pee-<em>  
><em>Gees that children play on the television<em>  
><em>these days are actually fairly accurate<em>  
><em>representations of how heroes were in the Age<em>  
><em>of Divinities.<em>

**WAVER stands up, looking at ISKANDER-SENSEI with a confused expression.  
><strong>

**_WAVER:_**  
><em>RPGs are clearly over-the-top fiction. How are<em>  
><em>they fairly accurate?<em>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>Good question, disciple! In Are-Pee-Gees,<em>  
><em>heroes barge their way into every house they<em>  
><em>run across, scouring high and low for the<em>  
><em>treasures that home-owners' have occulted away<em>  
><em>in obscure corners! What they find, they take,<em>  
><em>and the peoples of the nation receive their<em>  
><em>actions in good humor in order to support<em>  
><em>their campaign against the enemies! Such is<em>  
><em>the royal path of heroism!<em>

**_WAVER:_**  
><em>Wait, I don't think that's-<em>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>Archer's primary Noble Phantasm is something<em>  
><em>called a Hero's Inventory! In Are-Pee-Gees,<em>  
><em>heroes have extra-dimensional holding areas of<em>  
><em>immense space, which they use to store all<em>  
><em>manner of legendary Noble Phantasms that they<em>  
><em>obtain!<em>

**_WAVER:_**  
><em>Are you saying that game mechanics are real?<em>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>Indeed! And those who would honorlessly take<em>  
><em>advantage of the flaws of Are-Pee-Gee<em>  
><em>realities exist in the real world as well! I<em>  
><em>hear that there's a scoundrel by the name of<em>  
><em>EMIYA, who exploits something called an 'Item<em>  
><em>Replication Bug' to created unlimited Noble<em>  
><em>Phantasms!<em>

**_WAVER:_**  
><em>... Is this EMIYA a S- Servant in this War?<em>

**ISKANDER-SENSEI smiles knowiningly and wags his finger at WAVER.  
><strong>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>That would be telling, wouldn't it? You'll<em>  
><em>have to find out on your own merit, Waver-<em>  
><em>chan! Now, as to how Kensuke-kun can defeat<em>  
><em>Archer - if you go and grind near the Fuyuki<em>  
><em>Grand Hyatt, there's a small chance that you<em>  
><em>might randomly encounter a type of monster<em>  
><em>known as a Metal Slime! Try defeating it,<em>  
><em>because it will drop massive amounts of<em>  
><em>Experience Points! Do it enough, and soon<em>  
><em>you'll be strong enough to defeat even<em>  
><em>Archer's Heroic Inventory!<em>

**_WAVER:_**  
><em>Metal Slime? Are you talking about the Volumen<em>  
><em>Hydragyrum? That's a Mystic Code! How does it<em>  
><em>drop Experience Points!<em>

**Folding the letter and handing it back to the HAND that reaches in from offscreen, ISKANDER-SENSEI ignores WAVER and turns to look directly into the CAMERA.  
><strong>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>In any case, friends and comrades - that's<em>  
><em>all for today's issue! If Fate allows it, stay<em>  
><em>tuned for the next issue of ...<em>

**ISKANDER-SENSEI flexes his muscles heroically.  
><strong>

**_ISKANDER-SENSEI:_**  
><em>... Fujimura Dojo!<em>

**The CURTAINS draw.  
><strong>

**_WAVER:_**  
><em>Baka baka! Stop ignoring my questions, Rider!<em>

**_FEMALE (V.O.):_**  
><em>This issue of Fujimura Dojo was brought to you<em>  
><em>by Square-Enix of Japan. The World is Square.<em>

* * *

><p><strong>End Snippet.<strong>  
>Draft: Jan 31st 2012<p> 


	7. Casses Circumdant II

**Solenoid Flux**  
>An Evangelion  Fate Zero Crossover  
>Snippet #7: Casses Circumdant II  This Present Illusion

* * *

><p><strong>Miyama Commercial District, 09:15 PM<strong>

The church was in a quiet residential neighborhood, about ten blocks west of the commercial district in central Miyama - too far from the leylines for Lord El-Melloi's wraith familiars to serve as Lancer's reinforcements. To the Servant, however, it wasn't a significant strategic loss; the strength of low-level familiars was immaterial, and had little place in a proper engagement between Servants. If Assassin had caught wind of the evening's offensive at all, it was doubtful that the wraiths could've made much of a difference in the first place.

The buildings and surrounding grounds were secured by a bounded field of modest strength, well-enough designed that Lancer would've been hard pressed to detect it were he not a spirit. To his senses, the protection had the same character to it as the defensive provisions his Master had enacted at the hotel - permitting non-magi uninvolved in the War to go about their business unhindered, but blocking entrance to humans and entities of potentially threatening odic pressure. Though from lack of proximity to a leyline, the strength of the barrier here was of a far lower magnitude, its surface might have well been wrought of iron, surmountable to a typical Servant - manifest or demanifest - only through an exercise of uncommon force.

Lancer, however, was not a typical Servant. He was the bearer of the mystical spear, Gae Dearg - the Crimson Rose of Exorcism.

Despite its appellation, the effect of Lancer's Noble Phantasm was not to perfectly dispel or purge magecraft. The essences that Manannan mac Lir had imbued within the red spear permitted its blade to disrupt the flows of thaumaturgical energy, temporarily interfering with phenomenon unnaturally produced. A projection of an ongoing magecraft so disrupted would inevitably begin to reassert itself upon the passing of the blade, but rate of reassertion was subject to provision of fuel. So distant from the leylines, a long slash across the church's defenses would not regenerate for at least a second.

Lancer did not require the whole of a second to clear the barrier. The telltale odic leakage of Assassin's Master - obscured originally by the effect of the bounded field - was laid bare the moment Lancer set foot within, placing the magus within the lighted central edifice before an audience of human non-magi. Hostages? No. By the suggestion of the Grail, it was more likely a routine religious congregation; and the justification for the orientation of the bounded field. If the non-magi were stayed by some form of suggestion, the atmosphere within would've been detectably wrong.

Lord El-Melloi had made clear early on that the War was to be fought in secrecy from non-magi wherever possible, and that this was a rule and tradition of utmost importance. Under normal circumstances, Lancer would be inclined to agree; for in the heat of combat, even warriors of nigh-legendary skill would be hard put to absolutely ensure the safety of innocents en masse. However, though Assassin had yet to arrive or manifest in defense of his Master, Lancer had realistically only a small window of time to complete his task. He was needed at Lord El-Melloi's side - especially now that he could no longer be summoned via command seal.

Astralizing, Lancer entered the building through a stained glass window. The enemy master, apparently unaware of Lancer's arrival, lowly continued his solemn sermon - right up until Lancer materialized before his pulpit and rammed the Gae Buidhe through his throat.

The folk of the congregation were momentarily silent in shock, but at the frightened shriek of a small girl, they erupted into pandemonium. Withdrawing his spear from the enemy's corpse, Lancer prepared to immediately demanifest - but something about the bounded field had just changed drastically.

"I ... I can't astralize?" he asked himself, staring at the solid flesh of his hand.

In his disorientation, Lancer felt something sharp and thin pierce his lower back, right as Assassin's presence made itself known. He turned his head and found himself meeting the gaze of a smiling old woman, who had planted some medical apparatus - a syringe, his mind supplied - into his flesh.

The flock that had attended the sermon were no longer panicking. Instead, they silently looked upon Lancer with unsettling, identical grins - and on the floor beside the pulpit, the corpse of the enemy Master had become that of masked skeletal man clad in black, skin-tight garb.

Lancer had been unconsciously biased to the expectation that the enemy Servant would directly engage him as he had in the hotel - in part because he'd already done so, and in part because Lancer's own areas of specialization were so oriented. Assassin, however, did not by nature favor melee combat. In hindsight, it should've been obvious that a man like Hassan-i Sabbah would respond to known threats by setting the stage for ambush and assassination.

Presence Concealment, the Servant of the Lance belatedly realized, was a misleading name for Assassin's class ability. More accurately, it could be described as the flawless falsification of odic pressure gradients ...

* * *

><p><strong>Shinto Slums, 09:15 PM<strong>

The capacity to differentiate magi from mundanes by odic pressure was a feature fundamental of bounded fields. It was with this in mind that on noticing the _change_that had come upon the leylines, Emiya Kiritsugu forcibly deactivated all of his prana circuits.

His assistant, Hisau Maiya, wasn't able to do the same in time. With a delay of a few seconds, half a dozen wraiths manifested in the air, sniffing out her incompletely-suppressed thaumaturgical presence like spectral bloodhounds.

The deathly creatures were invisible to most humans without active reinforcement of sight, but to the eyes of Emiya Kiritsugu - which had been rendered low-functioning Jougan through alchemical surgery - they had the appearance of rotting human corpses, somehow comprised of blue light. Maiya, whose eyes were unmodified, could sense them only by presence, and barely dodged aside as one of them clumsily swiped at the wall she'd been hiding behind - breaking through the bricks with ease, and scattering debris across the rooftop.

Physical interference, thought Kiritsugu.

Of the participating Masters thus far known to the Einzberns, only one possessed sufficient skill in the relevant disciplines to employ familiars of this specific type and quality: Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi.

Twelve years ago, Kiritsugu had dispatched a cabal of necromancers who made a practice of binding and preserving the spirits of human sacrifices as highly functional familiars - beings known as Ghost Liners, who were similar but nonequivalent to Servants. These wraiths, incapable of independent magecraft, were nowhere near the same level of threat, but the principles behind their instrumentation were virtually identical. El-Melloi had bound the souls of countless dead to the domain of his 'leyline field,' enhancing their combat utility with some Wind-Elemental technique that granted them capacity for electromagnetic interference. Their surfaces were coated with force fields, in other words, lending them apparent kinetic solidity.

There were only six of the creatures here. If Kiritsugu and Maiya had been prepared for combat against Servants or spirits in general, they might have had a chance. Instead, they'd only lightly armed themselves for maximum mobility, intending to take out the human Masters of the War by conventional gunfire. As it was, the only weapon they currently possessed that could substantially harm the wraiths was Kiritsugu's Mystic Code - the Thompson Contender. The closest weapons cache they'd stocked with other anti-spiritual equipment was fifteen minutes away, outside of the slums.

Kiritsugu didn't have the time to deal with this. Not with Irisviel traveling unprotected; and certainly not with Berserker's sudden manifestation nearby.

Initiating the reactivation of his prana circuits, he softly intoned, "Time Alter - Double Accel," and pulled his Mystic Code from its holster as the world slowed.

Making more time was Emiya Kiritsugu's specialty.

* * *

><p><strong>Shinto Slums, 09:15 PM<strong>

Irisviel stopped the car in a wide street at the center of the slums, and disembarked along with her Servant. The vehicle, a blue Honda Saber by some odd turn of her husband's wit, had been parked near the beachfront district prior to the opening of the War - one of eight luxury sedans situated around the city for her convenience of transportation.

Stepping into the high-beams, Irisviel studied their opponents.

The white-haired enemy Master, Matou Kariya, little resembled the photograph that Kiritsugu had shown her not long ago. The disfigurement of his sweating, haggard face felt thaumaturgical in origin, and he seemed physically taxed - probably unused to supporting the heavy pranic demands of the War. Beside him stood his Servant, who was clad in a full suit of plate armor, and enshrouded in dark mist. There was nothing elegant or knightly about the figure, and to Irisviel, its hunched posture was more suggestive of a lower primate than a human. The intense, chaotic presence it exuded indicated that it was none other than Berserker.

"Be careful, Saber," she said.

Without taking her gaze off the enemy, the tiny, blond knight nodded seriously. The black three-piece suit she wore was replaced by her customary armored dress a moment later, and she instantly readied her weapon - a blade rendered invisible by the Boundary of the Wind King.

Kariya couldn't help but smile, despite his pain; his patience had paid off. More softly than Saber and Irisviel could hear over their vehicle's engine, he said to himself, "You better all be watching this, you bastards ..."

* * *

><p><strong>Fuyuki Grand Hyatt, 09:15 PM<strong>

It was almost like a dance.

Humans, Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi had thought, could not move like this; could not avoid the coordinated, high-speed kinetic attacks of his swarm of familiars. He'd personally designed and revised the threat response algorithms multiple times to ensure it. Within the vicinity of the rooftop, there were eighty-four wraiths, and with their magnetic shells fully actualized, they could each move at around thirty kilometers an hour. Evasion should've been impossible.

Tohsaka Tokiomi was performing it casually, as if it were merely a light warm-up exercise. Infuriatingly, he wasn't even moving very quickly - just at the minimal speed required to cleanly avoid each attack. Kayneth supposed that he was reading the familiars' attacks somehow, but short of analyzing and interpreting the spellwork in real-time, he couldn't see a theoretical means to do so - much less a practical one.

"Did you know," said the Asian man, sidestepping an incoming wraith without breaking stance, "that I was born with a mere eighteen prana circuits? Not of very high-quality, either. My daughters far surpass me innate talent."

Kayneth stared. Was this some obscure Oriental humor? Tohsaka's claim was belied by the very fact that he wasn't yet deceased; and it took an uncommon sort to raise his hand against the genius of Clock Tower and survive unharmed. Every passing moment, Tohsaka's slow advance across the rooftop grew more improbable, and Kayneth could feel a distinct growth in the magnitude of his odic pressure. It was almost as if the man's entire body had become one circuit of unreasonably high quality.

"There is a limit to the amount of provocation that I shall tolerate from you without reprise, Tohsaka," Kayneth snarled, removing a stoppered glass tube from the inner pocket his cassock. "You would dare claim to be a third-rate magus? That a mere peasant could avoid being crushed by my familiars!"

Tohsaka laughed congenially.

"No, not at all," he replied, weaving his way past another barrage of attacks. He was now only five meters away. "I'm merely indicating that within the context of Occidental thaumaturgy, my talents and skills would rank me as little more than a third-rate magus."

So saying, the man clapped his hands together, and Kayneth felt a wave of prana cross his body. It was too simple in structure to be described as an act of magecraft, and he could detect no discernible effect within his flesh - but across the helipad, more than forty of his familiars were instantly annihilated. This wasn't a typical act of purification or exorcism. The structures of the wraiths were dissolved - reduced to their component prana and dissipated purely by Tohsaka's force of presence. The remnant energies of the force fields that had given the creatures solidity crackled in the air.

"There is, however, more to the world than Occidental magecraft," said Tohsaka, amused at Kayneth's expression of incomprehension. "If you're willing to dedicate the time, the study of the traditions of the Orient is most rewarding."

Unbelievably, it seemed as if Tohsaka had nothing to fear from the wraiths; but Kayneth was a man who had never known failure, and he was not so easily put off. Not bothering to unstopper his glass tube, Kayneth angrily smashed it against the pavement. The metallic droplets of his Mystic Code settled briefly in separate beads for a moment before rejoining, growing in external volume until it was the rough size of an attack hound.

"_Fervor, mei sanguis,_" Kayneth intoned. "_Automatoportum defensio; automatoportum quaerere; dilectus incursio._"

As his weapon readied itself, Kayneth glared at Tohsaka, daring him to make a move. The _Volumen Hydragyrum_ was not so fragile that it could be eliminated with the sort of parlor trick that had destroyed his familiars. However, the Asian man's damnable smile exhibited not a trace of anxiety.

"_Ire sanctio!_" Kayneth shouted.

At nearly the speed of sound, the mercury sphere shot out a whip-like tendril, sharpened with an edge of diamond-like consistency maybe several molecules across. The cement blocks that Kayneth had tested the technique upon frequently appeared to remain intact for seconds after being bisected; and at the moment, he no greater desire than to see Tohsaka Tokiomi surprised at the fact of his own beheading. There was no avoiding the slash; no human had the response time to do so without magecraft, and the Japanese magus wasn't using any discernible reinforcement.

Or so Kayneth presumed.

Rather than meeting its target, the bladed tendril struck the gem of a ring on Tohsaka's right hand - and simply stopped rigid. From the point of contact, blue crystal began to spread across the rest of the _Volumen Hydragyrum_, rapidly enveloping the mercury in a solid block of translucent azure - and leeching away at the prana invested within.

"The Oriental methodology of Breathing and Walking was conceived of as a path by which to reach and interact with the Void at the root of existence," explained Tohsaka, pacing past the frozen Mystic Code. "However, such a feat might require multiple lifespans to attain. It's far easier to connect with existences that actively seek out temporary vessels to inhabit. Counter Forces, for example. I refer to my technique as _Musou Tensei_ - the Phantasmal Metempsychosis. It's a perfect counter to any strong thaumaturgy that distorts the world."

Not of his own accord, Kayneth backed away. His heart was pounding audibly.

"I intended no insult in confronting you myself, Lord El-Melloi," continued Tohsaka, stopping right as he violated Kayneth's personal space. "You see, Archer is loathe to waste his time fighting those who fail to qualify as Heroic Spirits. It's really just as well, because I haven't come here as a Master seeking to defeat you. I'm here in my official capacity as the Administrator of the Land of Fuyuki - and you, my Lord, no longer bear the Command Seals that mark you as a participant of the Grail War. I have no choice but to recognize you as an interloper."

For the first time that Kayneth could remember, he was beset by a weakness in his legs, and found himself collapsing to pavement.

"Are you familiar with Spaghetti Westerns, my lord? I saw a number of them when I was studying in Italy. Quite enjoyable." Tohsaka Tokiomi leaned toward him, hands folded behind his back. "But a common plot device within them is applicable here."

"Wh- What are you saying?" asked Kayneth, confused by the non-sequitur.

"Surrender your Crest to the House of Tohsaka and leave this place alive," replied the Asian man, "or refuse, and I send you to meet your maker. It's your choice."

* * *

><p><strong>End Snippet.<strong>  
>Draft: Nov 21st 2011<p> 


	8. Casses Circumdant III

**Solenoid Flux**  
>An Evangelion  Fate Zero Crossover Concept  
>Snippet #8: Casses Circumdant III  Dysconclusion

* * *

><p><strong>Shinto Slums, 09:16 PM<strong>

As one, the wraiths trained their empty eye-sockets upon the Magus Killer, pausing momentarily as if to assess the prana that now dispersed from his activated circuits. Attaining a silent consensus to prioritize his termination, perhaps, they abruptly reopened their assault with a swiftness that would've caught a typical user of reinforcement flatfooted. Even at Double Accel, Kiritsugu found that he was barely avoiding injury, and several times, the creatures' skeletal fingertips left shallow gashes across his Kevlar-lined coat.

Given the simplicity of the familiars' attack patterns, though, it was unlikely that El-Melloi was personally coordinating them. More probably, responses were being automated from some anti-magi heuristic coded into the leyline field - maybe designed to seek out the participants of the Grail War. So supposing, as long as the Command Seals that mediated Kiritsugu's own involvement in the game remained starved of prana as they presently were, the level of threat the wraiths represented could be downward-revised on the whole.

With a well-practiced motion, the Asian man chambered a large caliber bullet and closed the break-barrel of his Thompson Contender - squeezing off the round at one of the six wraiths.

In general, forces were exerted at a fraction of their standard rate during activation of Innate Time Manipulation, but inertia was significantly higher; and it was only with instinctive application of reinforcement that Kiritsugu overcame the recoil, dodging an attack and moving toward his next position without first confirming that he'd injured his mark.

In fact, he hadn't.

The bullet ricocheted from the electromagnetic barrier that covered the wraith's skin, lodging itself within a nearby wall. Noting merely that the outcome was roughly as he'd anticipated, Kiritsugu chambered a second round and fired it wide, putting a hole into a rusted water tower on the next building over. This time, however, the strain of Double Accel reared its ugly head, and the Contender - unintended in the first place for simultaneous deployment with Time Alter - kicked itself from his grip and clattered to the smog-blackened cement pavement.

Right as the wraiths began to close in, a flash of pistol fire registered in Kiritsugu's peripheral vision, and a window shattered across the street. It seemed that Maiya had caught on to what he was going for, and had come through where his own efforts had failed.

"_Release Alter_," he quickly intoned, applying pressure to his injured wrist. "_Field Enclose: Severance_."

The ammunition that Kiritsugu had fired were not of his remaining Origin Bullets. They were rounds of mostly normal composition, but invested with sigils typically incorporated in bounded field construction. The Contender, whose rifling was lined with prana-conducive alloy, had been utilized merely to prime and activate the first two bullets; while Maiya had prepared a third, firing it from a similarly customized handgun. Three points formed a triangle - and three bullets could be made to carry the smallest number of sigils necessary for the foundation of a spatial enclosure.

Emiya Kiritsugu's dual Origins - "Severing" and "Binding" - expressed themselves to some extent as Elements within his use of magecraft. A bounded field forged by his hand could, for example, be imbued with the property of "Severance." While the insulation inherent to a living soul made this meaningless as a countermeasure against humans and stronger familiars, a lesser thaumaturgical proxy that ventured into such a territory would be removed instantly of any ties to its original controller's will.

Sanitized of independent initiative by El-Melloi, and denied now the directives of their automation heuristics, the six wraiths could do nothing but float aimlessly within the triangular bounded field. As the disturbance in the leylines began to lift, so too did the engagement come to its conclusion.

Kiritsugu picked up and reholstered his Mystic Code, attempting to catch his breath as he engaged a healing spell to somewhat alleviate the pain that wracked his flesh. Aside from the damage to his wrist - which would require a closer examination later - the majority of his injuries felt to be the usual fare of burst capillaries and sprained muscles. It was sheer luck that he'd gotten off without skeletal fracturing - but all the same, he'd be out of optimal combat condition for a day or two.

Now, more than ever, it was clear to him just how far his skills had fallen off in his nine years of peace.

"See it through to the end," he uttered to himself softly, pacing to the edge of the roof where Maiya awaited. "You forfeited any right to doubt your course the moment you committed Irisviel to sacrifice."

* * *

><p>Unseen and unheard, a slight shadow that had been trailing Emiya Kiritsugu across the rooftops collapsed in the stairwell of a nearby fire escape. The bone-white mask it had borne shattered across the asphalt of the alleyway below.<p>

"Yuba ..." it cried. "Yuma ... Where have you gone?"

* * *

><p><strong>Miyama Commercial District, 09:17 PM<strong>

The flesh of a Servant was not fundamentally distinct from that of a human.

Structurally, there were tissues of assorted variants, and bones and muscles and nerves; even genetic material - everything one might expect to find in a living mammal. The functional difference lay primarily in the processes by which the condition of the flesh was maintained - and natural degradation beyond a certain level was ultimately mitigated by the thaumaturgical remnants of the Third Magic.

On a practical front, however, the fact that a Servant possessed a simulacrum of the flesh at all permitted that they be hurt or injured in the same manner as a human; and if their skin could be pierced by a knife, then so too could their cellular membrane be compromised by chemical agents - especially if they were unable to astralize and purge their system thereby.

Grimacing, Lancer pulled the syringe from his side and dropped it to tiled chapel floor. Whatever it was that he'd been dosed with, it was quickly acting, and he was already beginning to feel a severe nausea. The old woman who had planted the needle - now standing just out of range - cackled.

"I do apologize, young man," she said in saccharine tones. "Didn't have a chance to prepare a poison specifically on your behalf. The injection you were just administered was a concentrated extract of Nux Vomica, a concoction said to have brought low the King of Conquerors himself - the Rider of this War."

The syringe was not a Noble Phantasm; it could hardly qualify as a proper weapon. As thorough in its cowardice as its ingenuity in application, it had inflicted upon Lancer an injury far more insulting than any he had suffered before arms empowered through the mysteries. Contrasted against the majesty of crimson spiral Lance, he thought, the poison more clearly illustrated the nature of the enemy's personality. The Servant of the Mask was the antithesis of the knightly code - the embodiment of everything that Lancer despised in one entity.

"A- assassin ..." he hissed, supporting his shaking frame with the Gae Buidhe.

One by one, the folk of the congregation donned bone-white, skeletal masks, and their bodies seemed to lose focus within Lancer's vision - resolving again moments later, transfigured as midnight-clad creatures of assorted shape. Soon, the old woman alone retained the appearance of a commoner. Holding a mask before her breast, she smiled.

"Truly flattering that I would be subject to the attentions of such a beautiful young man," she said, "but I'm afraid I'll have to take my leave of you tonight. The stage has been set for the show to begin, and all that remains is for the other actors to arrive."

Stage? Actors?

"What nonsense are you speaking of, Assassin!"

The woman's only response was to bring the bone mask to her face, and along with her compatriots, her body dissipated into black dust. Almost the moment of their exit, a new presence - that of a human - entered from behind the chapel. Expecting yet another act of treachery, Lancer turned - and found himself meeting the empty gaze of the young priest that he had just "killed." The man's countenance didn't perceptibly change as Lancer tremblingly leveled the blade of Gae Buidhe at his throat.

"You won't be able to harm me with that, Lancer. You can barely even hold it properly."

"You haven't the presence of a Master," said Lancer, breathing roughly. "Are you yet another _Faker_?"

* * *

><p>The pair of divine bulls that drew the Gordius Wheel charged through the double doors of the chapel, shattering them to splinters. <em>Via Expugnatio<em>- the trampling attack that Rider had used to crush through the bounded field - left a trail of destroyed church benches and broken tiles in its wake, crackling with arcane energies. When the chariot finally ground to a halt, a dark-haired effeminate boy peered fearfully over the side from behind Rider's cape.

"The ... the King of Conquerors ..." Lancer managed to say, gaping at the indiscreet display.

"Hah! My title precedes me, then!" bellowed the large man in a jolly voice. "Indeed, you now breathe the same air as Iskander, conqueror of Persia and the Orient!"

Lancer, however, had already astralized; and a syringe's worth of odorless clear fluid fell to the floor where he'd been standing. The still-settling debris kept Rider from taking specific note of the splash, but he did sense the abrupt departure.

"Strange," he said. "He didn't strike me as a coward."

"R- Rider~!" whined the boy at his side - his Master, Waver Velvet. "Why did you just charge in without warning me! We couldn't even tell what was going on in here, what with that bounded field obscuring the view!"

Rider looked at the boy and pointed a thumb at the corpse beside the pulpit.

"The unlucky fellow over there vanished from my senses awhile ago," he said. "Didn't figure that he was dead or defeated - but it was clear that the glorious battle I'd envisioned wasn't coming to pass. I hoped to exchange words with Lancer before he left - maybe recruit him as a general of our forces."

Waver looked at his Servant incredulously.

"R- recruit him! He's an enemy Servant! He wouldn't listen to you!"

Rider laughed and tousled Waver's hair with meaty hand.

"At times, it takes a mortal enemy to truly appreciate the measure of your worth," he said. "In Sparta, it's said that the greatest love can exist only between two men who see each other across a battlefield for the first time, and comprehend immediately that they're destined to cross blades."

Waver shuddered, and said under his breath, "There's something terribly creepy about that statement."

The young Asian priest, who had been looking on, approached the side of the chariot.

"If I may intrude," he said. "My name is Kotomine Kirei, son of the Overseer of this War. I am - was - the Master of Assassin, and I thank you for intervening on my behalf. Were it not for your actions, Lancer might have executed me."

A Master's presence was relatively fainter than that of a Servant, and through the walls of the bounded field, Waver hadn't noticed that there was anyone else in the church besides Lancer and Assassin. Kotomine Kirei, however, had been present - and he now possessed none of the odic signature that indicated an active set of Command Seals. It was probable that the Grail had stripped him of his participation in the War once Assassin had been eliminated.

"Ah ... it was nothing," replied Waver. "Lancer shouldn't have been going after defeated Masters. But just to be safe, you should probably take refuge in the Sanctuary."

"I shall do so," the priest replied, bowing his head.

There was a certain crestfallen emptiness in Kotomine's eyes that inclined Waver to believe that he'd had a lot riding on Assassin's victory - and in defeat, he had the look of a man who had lost faith in almost everything. Politely receiving the priest's valedictions, Waver watched him leave the building with a sympathetic frown. Was this what defeat in the Grail War entailed? A complete loss of hope?

Rider, however, considered Kotomine's departing figure with narrowed eyes.

"Rubs me the wrong way, that one does," he said. "And Lancer didn't look to be the type to go about threatening people for no reason ...

* * *

><p><strong>Shinto Slums, 09:16 PM<strong>

'Three,' counted Kariya, grasping at the breast of his sweat-stained hoodie with a grimace. 'A pigeon, a wraith, and some sort of demonic creature. It feels like there's a fourth somewhere, but I can't pinpoint it.'

Wincing slightly, he parsed an update from the familiar he'd left at the hotel.

'Seems as if Tohsaka had the same idea that I did ...'

* * *

><p>Berserker's movements were not those of a fighter, but by Saber's estimation, he did possess a raw, untrained talent in acrobatics. Thrown bodily by her initial slash to a distance of maybe fifteen cubits, he again pounced forward, flipping in mid-air to throw his feet down against her defenses. Saber brought her blade to a parallel with the street just above her shoulder, blocking the attack.<p>

The Servant of Rage bounded away and began to circle predatorily, glaring at her with red, glowing eyes as he sought a weakness in her defense.

The armor that Berserker wore was very strange, thought Saber. Its color, which may have been black or purple, was obscured by a dark fog that seemed to possess the same defensive properties as the Boundary of the Wind King; and the metal plating had parted from her strike apparently unscathed. Mystical properties aside, though, the general cast of the armor wasn't anything she was familiar with, and she could see no practical use in the long shafts attached at the shoulders. According to the knowledge supplied by the Grail, the horned headgear somewhat resembled the helmets worn by the warriors of this eastern nation in centuries past - but the appearance was off enough that Saber couldn't conclude equivalence.

There must be some clue to discern his identity, Saber thought. Berserker was short of stature - only her height, roughly - but he was capable of matching or exceeding her in strength, speed, and endurance. That alone suggested that he might have been a hero of the Age of Divinities - or a fellow practitioner of the Prana Burst. If the latter were true, perhaps she could provoke him to more clearly demonstrate the technique.

Investing her prana within Invisible Air, she activated its secondary form - the Hammer of the Wind King. Her blade glowed momentarily with golden light as she raised it above her head, and a chaotic torrent of wind spiraled about it.

"_Strike Air!_" she shouted, aiming at Berserker as she brought her weapon down.

A tempest of highly pressurized air rushed forth from her blade, streaming toward the dark Servant with lethal potency. Rather than dodging aside or merely defending, however, Berserker swung his hand in a claw-like motion - releasing a colorless distortion that met the _Strike Air _and blew past it before dissipating. The enemy Master met Saber's eyes and smirked.

It wasn't a wind-based attack. Saber thought at first that she was correct in her assessment that Berserker was a user of the Prana Burst - but while there had been odic energy present within the distortion, it was in quantities too minute to warrant the disruption of the _Strike Air_. It felt almost as if Gaia itself had moved to cancel her attack.

"A nature spirit?" asked Irisviel from beside the automobile, some distance behind her.

Releasing an inhuman roar, Berserker began a rapid advance - leaping and deflecting from a wall to come at Saber from an angle. Saber had adequately reconstituted her sheath of air to defend, but wasn't quick enough to block a kick against her forearms. Though her gauntlet somewhat diffused the blow, she was forced within cubits of Irisviel. Falling back further was not an option.

In a defensive capacity, Invisible Air was free to vary to a number of different configurations. Steadying the construct with the hilt of her blade, Saber poured her energy into it, forcing it to extend into a flat barrier, perpendicular to the ground.

Berserker, however, had already defeated Invisible Air once. Crashing against the field of wind, he planted his fingers into it, palms opposed. To Saber's horror, the tips slowly sank through, tainting the barrier at the points of contact with a black mist that somehow interfered with structural integrity. Applying a colossal force, Berserker began to pull his hands apart - and as if the Boundary of the Wind King had been woven of so much cloth, it simply tore apart.

It was only the second night of the War - and Saber's first engagement - but her primary Noble Phantasm, the Sword of Promised Victory, had already been exposed.

"Berserker!" shouted the enemy Master. "Back! We're up against the King of Knights!"

No Command Seal was expended, but Berserker broke away on his Master's order. It surprised Saber that the black knight's loyalty was strong enough a feature of his character to permeate Mad Enhancement - but she wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Using the breather to reorder her defenses, she studied her opponent anew.

Irisviel's judgment was probably not entirely erroneous. Twice, Berserker had demonstrated that he could cancel high thaumaturgical phenomenon at will - and he did so without the use of a visible Noble Phantasm or a reasonably large expenditure of prana. As far as Saber knew, full divinities or nature spirits couldn't be summoned as Servants of the Grail - and that rather increased the chances that the dark Servant was some sort of demigod.

Within her mind, Saber's course was clear.

Though Irisviel had counseled her against exhibiting the full attributes of their trump so early in the War, Saber had nothing else within her immediate arsenal that could readily slay a demigod. Full activation at her present levels of energy might consume her unto unconsciousness, but she'd vowed to herself to defend Irisviel at all costs.

Readying the divine sword, Saber summoned the majority of her available resources and primed her attack.

"EX ..."

Eyes focused beneath the enemy's horned mask.

"-CALIBUR-!"

A searing, concentrated beam of brilliant white light fired forth from Saber's small frame, consuming all that would stand within her way. For all of its resemblance to a weapon of science fiction, this was not a power that had emerged from the bowels of human understanding, crafted by unveiling the world's truths. This was an embodiment of sheer fantasy - the distilled essence of humanity's prayers, framed by an unknowable, ironic hand.

This was the crystallization of the wishes of mankind - the beautiful light of destruction.

Saber was barely conscious upon the conclusion of the attack, drained and panting. Debris littered about the now-molten asphalt before her had caught aflame in the beam, lighting the smoke that filled the street in a hellish red cast. Something, however, caught her eye, and she found herself gaping.

Maybe thirty cubits before her, cloaked in a growingly chaotic swirl of black fog, Berserker glared at her completely unscathed - poised before his relative unharmed Master. Those red, glowing eyes that weighed her soul could not be human, Saber thought - they were the eyes of a demon out of hell.

"Wh- ... what manner of creature are you?" she whispered unsteadily.

The Master of Berserker, who had been coughing violently, spit out a quantity of blood.

"We're done for the night, Berserker," he said hoarsely. "Withdraw."

Obediently, the black knight crouched and took his Master into a fireman's hold. Giving Saber and Irisviel one last look, he bounded to the roof of an undamaged three-story building and vanished from view. The Servant of the Sword permitted herself to collapse only when the black knight's presence left her awareness entirely.

* * *

><p>With a hazy, unfocused consciousness, Arturia found herself staring up into the worried face of a beautiful woman, who was shouting something that she couldn't hear.<p>

"You shouldn't fear for my health, Guinevere," she replied, closing her eyes. "The sovereign monarch is an ideal - and ideals can never bleed ..."

* * *

><p>The white wire-frame hound deposited Saber in the back seat of the Honda, and Irisviel cancelled her dynamic transmutation, coiling the material back into her sleeves. She exhaled, brushing aside a stray hair from the girl's forehead.<p>

Kiritsugu regarded the small Servant merely as a tool, and for the ends that he desired, he had deemed her a necessary sacrifice. Saber, too, hoped merely to be deployed as a weapon, and cared little if she was killed in the process. Both sentiments were things that Irisviel could comprehend, but deep within her heart, she hid a secret that she dared not voice to those around her:

Her understanding of the necessity of another's sacrifice was purely intellectual.

If it were for the sake of Kiritsugu or his dream, she would gladly give her own life without a second thought. Whether this was because she was ultimately a homunculus, Irisviel didn't know, but self-sacrifice wasn't something she had a problem with. The idea of Kiritsugu or Saber being injured on her account, on the other hand, was totally and completely abhorrent to her. She didn't want to see it happen - didn't want to think about it.

And yet, it was happening before her eyes.

Before the War, she'd resolved to keep to herself her feelings on the matter, supporting Kiritsugu and Saber in their pursuits as wholeheartedly as she could. It occurred to her now that she might have overestimated her own strength - and vastly underestimated the threat the War posed to her loved ones. This first engagement could've easily ended Saber, and even now, the girl was suffering.

No, Irisviel decided. She wouldn't stand aside and allow Kiritsugu and Saber to fight alone. It was true that her alchemy was unsuited for combat, but there had to be a way for her to apply herself - to protect those she held dear.

Footsteps broke the relative silence of the street, and Irisviel became aware that a strong, Servant-like presence had manifested behind her. Charging her wires, she turned.

Twenty meters from the car, a short figure in silver plate armor regarded her silently. The look of the equipment was similar enough to Berserker's that Irisviel momentarily thought he'd returned - but the new Servant lacked the strange shoulder-shafts and the demonic mask. Instead, aside from a pair of glass-lensed indentations on either side of the head, the helmet was entirely smooth and featureless - polished to a shine.

The style of the armor seemed vaguely European to Irisviel, but the Servant's weapon was a different matter altogether. Within his hands, he held a black-bladed katana with a hilt that resembled something mechanical.

There was a faint noise that sounded like a radio communication from the Servant's helmet, but Irisviel was too far away to make out the speech. The Servant's reply, however, was clear.

"Yes, Mother," he said.

* * *

><p>The 8th Servant of the War ... (?)<p>

**FALSE SABER** (?) / **V17 b-005**  
>master: "mother"<br>gender: Male  
>attribute: Lawful Neutral<br>strength: B  
>endurance: C<br>agility: A  
>mana: C<br>luck: F-

An unknown interloper clad in silver armor.

**Skills:**

**Independent Action** (?) - Rank EX: Indefinite or permanent manifestation at no requisite prana cost.  
><strong>Territory Creation<strong> - Rank B: Construction of a mobile spatial quarantine that rejects foreign phenomenon. As it is constantly active, it doubles as Magic Resistance.  
><strong>Information Erasure<strong> (?) - Rank D: Servant parameters and attributes are invisible to a Master's Perspective  
><strong>Battle Continuation<strong> - Rank A: Capable of combat while bearing potentially deadly injuries; will remain alive so long as lethal incapacitation does not occur.  
><strong>Disengage<strong> - Rank D: Capacity to break from combat. Rapid restoration of status when removed from combat situations.  
><strong>Clairvoyance<strong> - Rank D: Non-visual detection of objects and presences at ranges up to 2 km.  
><strong>Vitrification<strong>- Rank C: A serene state of mind, which nullifies mental interference of equivalent rank.

**Noble Phantasms:**

**Maglock Katana (Prototype)**  
>rank: -<br>type: Anti-Unit  
>A highly durable carbon composite katana with a hilt of nonstandard design. When provided energy from the metallic ports on the Servant's hands, the blade is capable of vibration at super-sonic frequencies for improved cutting power. Equivalent to a B-Rank Noble Phantasm.<p>

**P-06 Standard (x2)**  
>rank: -<br>type: Anti-Unit  
>A pair of pistol-like weapons that electromagnetically discharge large-caliber rounds at supersonic speeds. Not a Noble Phantasm.<p>

* * *

><p><strong><strong>MasterMagus Statuses**  
><strong>  
>Emiya Kiritsugu: Injured<br>Tohsaka Tokiomi: Active  
>Kotomine Kirei: Retired (Active)<br>Waver Velvet: Active  
>Matou Kariya: Injured  Prana-Depleted  
>Uryuu Ryuunosuke: Active<br>Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri: Active

"Mother": Active  
>Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi: Eliminated<br>Irisviel von Einzbern: Missing

**Servant Statuses**

Saber: Prana-Depleted / Missing  
>Archer: Active<br>Assassin: Active (78 of 80)  
>Rider: Active<br>Berserker: Injured / Recovery Hibernation  
>Caster: Active<br>Lancer: Injured  
>False Saber: Active<p>

**Current Master-Servant Pairs**

Emiya Kiritsugu / Saber  
>Tohsaka Tokiomi  Archer  
>Kotomine Kirei  Assassin  
>Waver Velvet  Rider  
>Matou Kariya  Berserker  
>Uryuu Ryuunosuke  Caster  
>Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri  Lancer  
>"Mother"  False Saber

* * *

><p><strong>End Snippet.<strong>  
>Draft: Nov 27st 2011<p> 


	9. Wednesday, 19th March

**Solenoid Flux**  
>An Evangelion  Fate Zero Crossover  
>Snippet #9: Wednesday, 19th March<p>

* * *

><p><strong>The 18th, Evening<strong>

On the asphalt near the burning Honda, the carcass of a bat lay in a small puddle of blood, cut in two along the spine. To each side, there was taped a cleanly bisected half of a miniature wireless camera.

"It seems that Tohsaka Tokiomi's phantom has made its second move," said Emiya Kiritsugu. "Or if not, a third party has taken the stage."

The words were delivered with calculated slowness. To anyone else, it might have seemed that the Magus Killer were disinterestedly reciting a fact; but Hisau Maiya knew him too well to be misled. Beneath his calm countenance, there raged a true anger.

"We haven't positively confirmed Tohsaka's involvement, though."

Kiritsugu gazed in the direction of the Fuyuki Hyatt.

"It's obvious that the theatrics that he engaged in tonight were for purposes of intimidation," he said, pulling a cigarette and a silver Zippo lighter from the inner pocket of his overcoat. "Knowing that the attention of every Master would be drawn to the stage that El-Melloi had set, he took the opportunity to establish himself as an enemy that one doesn't lightly challenge. However, the timing is suspicious. There doesn't seem to be a reason for him to take action at this juncture."

"You refer to the direct coincidence of his attack with the Madam's kidnapping?"

"I see little reason for it besides to lend him an alibi," said Kiritsugu, lighting his cigarette. Taking a draw and exhaling, he continued, "By odic pressure alone, what briefly appeared in this location following Berserker's departure could only have been a Servant-class entity. Ignoring the fact that the unknown's energy signature was a mismatch for the confirmed Heroic Spirits of this War, Tohsaka's Archer and the as-yet-unseen Caster are the only ones whose precise locations were unaccounted for at the time of the kidnapping. Neither class is traditionally capable of masking or altering their presence - but it isn't nearly unimaginable that such a thing could be realized through high thaumaturgy."

Of the known Masters, Maiya knew, the only ones established to possess the skill to perform such a feat were Tohsaka Tokiomi and Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi. The latter's Servant was not unaccounted for - and the man had just been forcibly removed from the War. That left Tohsaka as a prime suspect.

"How do we know that this wasn't the work of Caster, though?" she asked. "Or of some third party interloper?"

"We don't," replied Kiritsugu. "But until we have sufficient evidence to justify reprioritization, Tohsaka Tokiomi shall be our primary target."

The fire in the Magus Killer's eyes was unmistakable, and as Maiya nodded in quiet affirmation, she tried to suppress the part of her that dared hope Emiya Kiritsugu might someday worry after her the way he did the Madam ...

* * *

><p><strong>AD 204X <strong>(?)

He found the car broken down in the nearby village - not far from the deserted farmer's cottage that he lived in. The hood was still somewhat warm in the cool afternoon air, and he hadn't seen it when he passed through earlier in the day. By its bearing, the owners were probably headed toward the Enclave near the border of Vladivostok Territory. Abandoning the car was the right choice; the distance was only four or five kilometers, and they could make it to the settlement on foot before nightfall if they hurried.

He didn't want to think about what might happen if they didn't arrive in time.

Wrapping his traveler's cloak about his body, he lifted weightlessly from the street and soared eastwards - in the direction of the massive fortress-like structure on the horizon.

* * *

><p>They left the country road at some point, and it wasn't until twilight that he managed to locate their presence in the ruins of a larger town - maybe a kilometer away from the Enclave. They were a family of four: a man and a woman, and two young children. It seemed as if they might have been seeking drinkable water.<p>

The sky had already begun to darken, however - and with the night came the creatures that had claimed the barren wastes in humanity's absence.

Not all who emerged from the Rapture as individuals did so intact. Fragmented psyche - too incomplete to qualify as human - fused and bonded and merged; and upon attaining the definition to reassert a material existence, they stalked from the seas of blood as twisted chimeras - nocturnal, physically heterogeneous monsters whose forms were only partially recognizable as human, if at all.

The monsters possessed little inherent stability as organisms. Isolated for long enough and their flesh would begin to lose cohesion, degrading to LCL as their component soul fragments returned to the Sea. Their corporeal substantiation, though, was extensible through the consumption of the flesh of humans - the only other multicellular life that had returned to land in significant numbers. By some rudimentary survival instinct, they began to assemble in predatory packs to raid human settlements, eventually necessitating the construction of the fortress walls that now defended every Enclave.

Feared and loathed as the offspring of the Angels, the creatures were dubbed the "Nephilim."

By the time of his arrival, around a dozen of the things had cornered the family against a rusted, overturned tractor-trailer. The father - a stout, bearded man approaching middle age - was already mildly injured, and the futility of attempting to pierce his attackers' AT-fields with rifle shot had begun to fill his eyes with a despairing panic. Behind him, the wife and children huddled with tear-streaked faces.

Tonight, he decided, no human lives would be lost in this place.

A pair of crimson spikes protruded from the palm of his right hand, extending outwards, and then twisting to form a cylindrical shaft that ended in a double-pronged blade: A replica of the Lancea Longini, based on what he remembered of it from when it had temporarily been a part of his body. Crafting it from his flesh always made him feel a little inhuman, but it wasn't something that he could afford to dwell upon at the moment. The deployment of his AT-field had not gone unnoticed, and the Nephilim had suddenly turned their attention to him.

He could've theoretically killed off the creatures with offensive AT-field techniques, but his control wasn't nearly good enough to do so when there were bystanders within range. In this situation, the Lance Replica was by far a safer and more practical implement. Though the polearm technique that he'd devised to use with it was artless and clumsy - worthless to anyone who couldn't casually throw up an AT-field - it permitted the application of the weapon's intended function, which slightly differed from that of the original.

The AT-fields of even the strongest Nephilim couldn't compare to those of Angels, but they was still capable of blocking rounds from conventional firearms. Before the Lance Replica, however, they might as well have been made of wet tissue paper. Within the first forty seconds of the fight, the three creatures closest to him were reduced to puddles of LCL, and he watched as the sparks of their souls drifted away.

The Lance Replica did not absorb - it dispersed. The S^2 Organ that now comprised the center of his brain had removed any natural termination to his lifespan for the foreseeable future. He had no intention of spending the rest of eternity with the Nephilim as a part of his soul.

At the deaths of their fallen companions, the instinct of self-preservation that had driven the Nephilim to hunt humans in the first place now made them wary; they understood that they were faced with a stronger predator. It was, however, not quite enough to make them back off, and so they stood their ground, confident in their numerical superiority as their alpha took the fore.

It was grotesque figure - the scarred, heavily muscular body of a hulking, headless man, attached at the chest to the back of a young girl's fair-skinned torso, which possessed an extra set of arms. The torso itself wasn't connected to a matching lower body; and instead, the 'girl' was conjoined to the man's abdomen like some sort of Siamese twin. Seeking to declare its dominance, perhaps, the Nephilim issued a threatening roar from the 'girl's' mouth - almost identical to that of a lion.

It wouldn't have understood if he thanked it for its decision; but the moment it identified itself, his task had become far easier.

Dashing forward, he thrust the tip of his weapon at the girl's face. The alpha's response time was superior, and it managed to raise the 'man's' arm just in time to defend - but in the end, even a noncritical injury from the Lance could be disabling. Where the double blades punctured the forearm, the flesh immediately lost integrity; and a hand fell to the cracked surface of the street with a visceral splatter. Betraying an extreme pain at the loss of its limb, the 'girl' grimaced and gave a tortured cry. The distraction was long enough for him to plunge the Lance through the 'girl's' navel and violently jerk it upwards - bisecting 'her' torso and head in the process. Cut from its souls, the body began to collapse.

A creature that had merely killed three of the pack probably wasn't too intimidating - but one that had effortlessly destroyed an alpha was not something that the Nephilim dared challenge. Intimidated beyond their level of comfort, they began to slowly retreat.

Then, with a very rapid sequence of fleshy thunks, swords were abruptly plunged through their skulls.

"Zabaniya," said a male voice from a nearby rooftop, just beyond his relaxed sensory range. "The Guardian of the Wastes of Hell - the Nineteenth Angel. Figures that Control would fail to mention your involvement when they radioed for me to head out here."

A man dressed in military fatigues leapt down from the top of the building, holding what appeared to be a black composite bow. Nimbly landing, he pulled his bowstring back. When it had reached its maximum, a sword identical to the ones that had slain the Nephilim manifested with the base of its hilt resting at the knocking point. The blade felt as if it were somehow crafted from an AT-field.

"Maybe you weren't around before the Third Impact," said the newcomer, "but they used to hunt down your kind with these giant bionic mecha called Evangelions. I've got nothing like that in my arsenal, obviously, but you'll find that these swords are more than capable of cutting you down."

The soldier was a redhead - older and male - but if you took away the tan of his skin and changed his eye color - made him maybe a decade younger - his facial features would resemble nobody more than ...

Unbidden, the somatic memory of a neck snapping within his grip crossed his mind, and he stumbled backwards, dropping the Lance Replica.

[Wh- who are you!] he shouted. [How can you exist! She was dead!]

The main raised a brow.

"Unified Language, huh?" he said. "I don't know who you've mistaken me for, and I don't really care." Without breaking guard, he slowly repositioned himself until the family of refugees was directly at his back. "I've heard, though, that you've never really shown any hostility against humans. Try to keep that up, and we won't have any problems."

Parted from his conscious maintenance, the Lance began to decompose into LCL.

[Tell me,] he said, trying to collect himself. [What was the name of your mother?]

The man seemed growingly confused.

"My mother?" he asked. "I don't remember my mother. Why the hell would it matter to you?"

Involuntarily taking another step back, he caught his reflection in a broken shop window from the corner of his eye. Accusingly, the pale, birdlike face of Sachiel glared at him from beneath the hood of his black traveler's cloak.

_Do not think yourself sinless_, it said. _For the murder of brethren, your toils shall be cursed never to yield crop, and unto the ends of this world shall you be marked ..._

* * *

><p><strong>The 19th, Morning<strong>

'That was ... Berserker's past?'

Kariya allowed himself to lie for a bit before painfully sitting up from his bed, squinting in the unpleasant brightness of the room. The eastward-facing windows had white venetian blinds, but even closed, they didn't do much to keep out the morning sunlight. It was a small blessing that the worms were mostly inactive during the day.

That nightmare, he wondered - was it a part of the dream cycle induced by the Grail?

According to the texts in the old man's library, a Master would be instinctively able to tell if the contents of a dream experienced during the War didn't originate from their own minds. The scenes he witnessed certainly felt foreign in origin, but the contents were utterly incoherent. Real events, he was fairly sure, wouldn't have such blatant symbolism.

At the very beginning, Berserker indicated that his legend hadn't yet come into existence. Kariya - who had been too caught up in logistical concerns of his strategy at the time - paid the claim little mind, but now it seemed to be forcing itself upon his consciousness.

The Nephilim; the talk of the Angels; the Lancea Longini; the Rapture.

Abrahamic religion was a recurring theme throughout the nightmare, and there was heavy hinting that Berserker might have been a figure from the Christian eschatology. On the other hand, there were things that seemed like rejected concepts from a science fiction movie - the stereotypically futuristic design of the Enclave, for example; or the mention of the bionic mecha. Meshed with all of the religious symbolism, the sequence might have been stolen from some badly researched anime script or light novel - and that alone made him wonder if it wasn't all a mental regurgitation of random fiction he'd been exposed to as a child.

Assuming he could take it seriously, though, the bit about Zabaniya was confounding. In the Islamic tradition, the angel that guarded hell was named as Maalik, and the Zabaniya were the nineteen tutelary spirits that assisted him in his task - presumably the inspiration of the Noble Phantasms used by the nineteen Hassan-i Sabbah. However, Zabaniya as a singular entity described as the 'Nineteenth Angel" or the 'Guardian of Hell' went blatantly against its mythological background. Along with the black cloak and the bird-like bone mask, the name-dropping raised confusing questions about Berserker's precise relationship with the Assassins.

Why was the sight of the man with the swords so frightful?

Kariya shook his head, clearing his mind. There wasn't any use in dwelling upon these things until they became relevant. For now, it was best to simply concentrate on the War.

'The others players now know me as the Master of Berserker,' he thought, limping out into the kitchen. 'And Berserker's become a sufficiently known quantity that we probably won't be implicated for the actions we've taken the past couple of days.'

Already, Tokiomi had eliminated the Master of Lancer, who had in turn destroyed Assassin. Lancer and Archer were still alive, but for awhile they would be occupied fighting one another, presumably. All that remained was to involve Caster and Rider in the mess, and then sit back. The familiar Kariya had left to monitor Saber and her Master had been killed, but in the event that the pair turned up again, they probably wouldn't seek a rematch against Berserker immediately.

'The question is, was the little show we put on intimidating enough to keep the others from attempting an attack?'

Common sense would dictate the negative, but the magi were by definition removed of normality. The fact that they valued magic and magecraft over the worth of any life - including their own - was how a completely senseless death-match like the War of the Grail could've come about in the first place. The final words of the late Master of Lancer had cemented this understanding within Kariya's mind.

'This is how they get around to thinking that people are more or less tools,' he thought, opening the refrigerator.

Besides the usual fare of beer, comfort foods, and instant meals, there were actually some vegetables and cooking ingredients stocked in the bottom drawers, from when Berserker had convinced him to go grocery shopping. Undeniably, the flat had become increasingly livable since the boy had taken up the domestic duties.

'Am I really any different, though?' wondered Kariya. 'From the very beginning, the plan was to sacrifice Berserker and myself for Sakura's sake.'

Sighing, he removed a can of Yebisu from a six-pack and shut the door, stalking out into the living room. Lazily plopping down on the couch, he turned on the news and pulled open the tab of the can. A commentator was discussing President Clinton's recent move to bar the United States from federally funding human cloning research - making a point that those who supported such science were in essence arguing for the commoditization of humanity.

"Tell me, Aoi," said Kariya. "Do you think I'm a hypocrite?"

* * *

><p>The catacombs beneath the district of Shinto dated from the Edo period, when the crypto-Christians in the area had utilized them for purposes of worship. The subterranean tomb at the Pro-Cathedral of Fuyuki connected to the historic primary entrance, but there were other passageways into the system hidden throughout the city. Some had collapsed over the years, and others had been destroyed during the construction of the sewers and the subways - but those that otherwise remained were had been faithfully documented by the Fuyuki Historical Society.<p>

The spiral stairwell that descended from the fourth sub-basement of the Fuyuki Grand Hyatt was not on record; Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi had bored it out mere days before his death.

By the time Kotomine Kirei arrived, Tohsaka Tokiomi was already waiting in the rectangular stone chamber at the base - smiling faintly as he examined the symbols carved into the walls by flickering lamplight.

"Amazing, is it not?" asked Tohsaka. "These are the foundational sigils of the altered bounded field we witnessed last night - inscribed by Lord El-Melloi with use of his Mystic Code. The products of his talent and ingenuity are truly breathtaking."

"Perhaps," said Kirei, sullenly. "But in the end, the sum of his talents was proven unequal to yours."

Tohsaka Tokiomi chuckled, but shook his head.

"You misunderstand, Kirei," he said. "The effectiveness of the Musou Tensei is dependent on the strength of the thaumaturgy employed by the opponent. My choice to use the technique was a gamble based upon an utmost respect for Lord El-Melloi's talent. Were his magecraft any weaker, the possibility exists that I would no longer be here. The Counter Force does not exercise itself where it is unneeded."

Expressionlessly, Kirei directed his gaze to the glass jar that sat beside the lamp on the floor. Within, a mass of bloody flesh floated in viscous, clear liquid.

"You would suggest that failure and success have no inherent meaning, then?" he queried.

"The only meaningful failure is death," replied Tohsaka Tokiomi, gazing upwards at the intricate magic circle across the ceiling. "In all other cases, a loss is what we make of it - and so long as we find worth in what we have attained, even in defeat, we are triumphant. Do you judge the Excalibur worthless merely because it has failed to slay Berserker?"

The explanation seemed not to purely address an optimistic philosophical stance. If Kirei read the meaning correctly, it was an endorsement of pragmatism - and the "worth" spoken of was beyond self-satisfaction a matter of securing or appreciating accomplishments of tactical value to future objectives even in defeat. Was Tohsaka Tokiomi a man who viewed the entire world as a sequence of branching contingencies, then?

It was unimaginable, and inhumanly empty - moreso than the void that Kotomine Kirei sought to fill within his own heart. Tohsaka Tokiomi had to find comfort and reassurance in something more substantial.

"I can unfortunately find no worth in the outcome of my engagement with Lancer," said Kirei. "The original response plan that I laid out with Assassin in case of my discovery didn't account for the presence of a third party like Rider. When it became apparent that he intended to intervene, we had no choice but to abandon confirmation of Lancer's destruction. As such, we now have a loose end, and it's merely the third day of the War."

"A loose end Lancer may be," said Tohsaka, "but with what we now know of the properties of the crimson spear, we've essentially confirmed Lord El-Melloi and his partner to be the perpetrators of the attack upon the Estate. Elimination of this loose end consequently brings to heel a primary threat to our defenses."

It wasn't a very revealing answer, but Kirei supposed that there would be other opportunities to pick at Tohsaka's psychology.

"Possibility of a second discovery makes it imprudent to have Assassin perform the cleanup," he said. "What course of action would you propose?"

Tokiomi smiled, folding his hands behind his back as he faced his shadow.

"The matter that presently occupies Lancer is undoubtedly a desire for vengeance," he said. "It is my intention to oblige him - to give him the fight that he seeks. Before the King of Heroes, he shall be reacquainted with the inevitability of death, and know despair ..."

* * *

><p>The temporary office that Ikari Yui had been assigned had become quite cluttered within a mere twenty-four hours.<p>

"I think these are all of the personnel documents that you requested," said Kyoko, laying a clear plastic folder across the top of a thick volume on gestalt psychology.

"Thank you," said Yui. "Oh, and by the way - that maintenance crew you assigned me last night was a huge help. I look forward to working with them again."

"Not a problem," replied Kyoko, nodding and politely smiled back.

Inwardly, she was feeling a little out of her league in regards to the situation. Ikari Yui wasn't an intimidating individual, per se, but the eight technicians that she'd requisitioned to accompany her into the city last night had been downright spooked by whatever they'd seen. In a closed debriefing afterwards, they'd been assigned some high security clearance gag order that had them refusing to mention anything - almost as if they were afraid for their lives. The 'samples' they'd returned with were in the mean time quietly sequestered to a subterranean sector of the lab that was off-limits to just about everyone.

Not unexpectedly, the atmosphere about the office today had been palpably tense - and Ikari Yui either hadn't noticed or simply didn't care. She'd gone about her business with an imperturbable amicability that felt very, very out of place. It was painfully obvious that she wasn't the run-of-the-mill intern that she pretended to be.

'We're still adjusting to her presence,' Kyoko rationalized. 'It's not like she's a bad person or anything ...'

Trying to make small talk, she asked, "Who's that guy you've been staring at on your monitor all morning? He's got that scruffy older man look that I really like."

With pleasant smile that didn't reach her eyes, Ikari Yui replied, "I don't know his name, but he's the reason that I was specifically assigned to this response effort."

On screen, the face of Emiya Kiritsugu was illuminated by firelight.

* * *

><p><strong>AD 12XX<strong> (?)

In the beginning, there was nothing.

Not light, not shadow.

Only him.

"You have been disconnected," said a voice with no origin. "All that is unnecessary for your immediate survival has been severed from your mind."

_Lord Propagandist_, he uttered soundlessly. _What am I to do?_

"You are to regain and master those things that have been taken from you," said the voice. "Every inch of bone; every hair; every strand of muscle. With your mind alone, you shall grasp ahold of them, and without reliance upon the instinct given unto us by Allah, you shall draw yourself from stone and be born anew."

_And if I fail?_

"Neither paradise nor hell awaits. Your mind shall erode to the chaos of the [ ], and soon you shall be as dust within the abyss."

For a time, he was unable to summon any words, and perhaps an eternity passed before he uttered his response.

_Why?_ he asked. _Why have I been consigned to this punishment? I am faithful and devout!_

"What know you of the angel Zabaniya, Adherent?"

_In the End of Days, he stands sentinel in the barren wastes of Jahannam, guiding the lost to sanctuary. By his spear, the infidels know their sins and are unmade. He is the once and future patron to the Final Judgment of humanity._

"And why is it that we have cloaked our disciples in shadow? Why do they bear the mask of Zabaniya? Why must we give up our names?"

_It is that we shall be as the Angel of the Wastes, harboring the folk unto salvation._

"In this hour, Adherent, we are in need of a guide of unprecedented ability," said the tired, aged voice of the propagandist. "It was the conclusion of the Elders that you possessed the potential to be shaped as the sword of the Order. Do you comprehend?"

And then he did.

It was not he who had been chosen to bear this nameless suffering. It was he who had given himself over - to be educated that he might bring forth salvation by his own hands. If necessary, he had long since vowed to destroy himself for the sake of his people.

_Lord Propagandist_, he said with renewed conviction. _I shall be the sword that draws itself from stone._

* * *

><p><strong>Timeline C<strong>

**Medieval Era**:

**125X**: Hulagu Khan captures the primary strongholds of the Hashishin, forcing the sect underground. At this time, the leader of the Hashishin is an individual known as the "Hundred-Faced Hassan."  
><strong>1589<strong>: The Prague Academy - a primary member organization of the Sea of Estray - decommissions a golem of their construction at the request of Emperor Rudolf II. Its remains are entombed in a facility beneath a graveyard in the district of Zizkov in Prague.

**Modernity**:

**1978**: The discipline of Metaphysical Biology is founded with the discovery of the existence of the soul.  
><strong>1982<strong>: Fuyutsuki Kouzou demonstrates that a soul can intervene in physical phenomenon with the electronic modulation of a frog's brain. Practical applications of Metaphysical Biology begin to be developed.  
><strong>1986<strong>: The UN-funded Artificial Evolution Concern establishes a series of laboratory facilities across Japan to track soul-modulated alterations in physical phenomenon, known as "synchronization events."  
><strong>1988<strong>: Noted scientist Ikari Hashidate and his daughter Yui are gunned down by the assassin known as the Magus. Yui survives with mild injuries. This is the last known sighting of the Magus.  
><strong>1989<strong>: Katsuragi Keima refines the tracking system created by the UN-AEC. He begins to hypothesize on the nature of high-order synchronization events that he refers to as Type:Blue.  
><strong>1995<strong>: Ikari Yui joins the laboratory of Katsuragi Keima as an intern.

**March, 1997** (4th Grail War):

**?**: Matou Kariya summons Berserker.  
><strong>17th, Evening<strong>: Unknown Servant launches assault on the Tohsaka Estate.  
><strong>18th, Noon<strong>: "Assassin" infiltrates the Fuyuki Grand Hyatt. After disabling electronic security, he attempts to eliminate Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi. Lancer intervenes and drives him off, but not before El-Melloi loses his command seals. El-Melloi's fiancee, Sola-Ui, becomes Master of Lancer. After deliberation, it is decided that El-Melloi will continue to act as Master.  
><strong>18th, Afternoon<strong>: Ikari Yui arrives in Fuyuki City.  
><strong>18th, Evening<strong>: Ikari Yui was not specifically informed of the nature of her task, but recognizes that Fuyuki exhibits a far higher than average incidence of "synchronization events." Preparations are made to collect "samples."  
>El-Melloi unleashes a city-wide bounded field. Upon locating Assassin's Master, Kotomine Kirei, he orders Lancer to attack. However, as Lancer departs, El-Melloi is attacked by Tohsaka Tokiomi, who suspects him of being the perpetrator of the attack upon the Tohsaka Estate. El-Melloi is killed, and his Crest is extracted. After Assassin is "eliminated" by a severely poisoned Lancer, Rider intervenes, preventing Lancer from killing Kotomine. Kotomine takes refuge in the official Sanctuary of the War.<br>Meanwhile, Matou Kariya reveals himself as the Master of Berserker, and engages Saber. The fight ends inconclusively, and Kariya withdraws. Shortly thereafter, "False Saber" captures Saber and Irisviel von Einzbern. Arriving on the scene a little bit too late, Emiya Kiritsugu deduces that the perpetrator behind Saber and Irisviel's kidnapping might be Tohsaka Tokiomi.  
><strong>19th, Morning<strong>: Tohsaka Tokiomi and Kotomine Kirei conclude that Lancer is a loose end in their plan to create the fiction that Assassin is defeated. Tokiomi decides that he and Archer will perform cleanup.  
>Ikari Yui has concluded that she may have been specifically selected for her present task due to the Magus' involvement in the events ongoing within the city.<p>

**Future **(Timeline A?):

**2000**: 2nd Impact  
><strong>2015<strong>: 3rd Impact  
><strong>204X<strong>: Near Vladivostok Territory in the former Russian Federation, an entity called Zabaniya saves a family from being slaughtered by vampiric creatures known as the Nephilim. Immediately afterwards, he encounters a redheaded man capable of materializing unlimited swords.

* * *

><p><strong>End Snippet.<strong>  
>Draft: Dec 11th 2011<p> 


	10. The Court Unseelie

**Solenoid Flux ****  
><strong>An Evangelion / Fate Zero Crossover  
>Snippet #10: The Court Unseelie<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Yatsushirodai Elementary School, 02:15 PM<strong>

Steadily, black leather dress shoes clicked along the linoleum floor of an aging school hallway. Before the open entrance of the teachers' lounge, they came to a stop, and a gloved hand curtly knocked against the wooden door.

It was still hours until classes would be let out, and so only one of the faculty members was on duty within - a bespectacled young woman indicated by her nameplate to be an Itou Mayuri, busily grading math exams at a cluttered desk lined with framed photographs. At the knock, she looked up from her work with a cordial smile.

"Hello," she said. "Can I help you?"

The man standing in the doorway was slightly unshaven, dressed in a black suit and trenchcoat.

Making eye contact, he said, "My name is Tohsaka Tokiomi, and my daughter Rin is a student in class 2-A. I was told that somebody in this office would be able to help me get ahold of her. There's been a traffic accident, and my wife is about to undergo intensive surgery."

It was only after he mentioned his name that Mayuri realized that she'd met him previously on one occasion, back when his daughter had transferred in three months ago. It might have been the empty, driven look in his eyes that had thrown her off initially. He'd been far more collected at their previous encounter, and there was a genuine distraught in his overall bearing that hadn't been there before.

"Should I, er, inform Rin of the situation?" she asked, standing urgently and approaching the door.

"I'll think of a way to break it to her myself on the way to the hospital," he replied. "Just tell her that there's been a family emergency, and that I'll be waiting for her in the parking lot."

"I understand," said Mayuri. "If there's anything that the school can do to accommodate you, feel free to call us."

Solemnly, the man nodded.

"Thank you for your concern."

* * *

><p>In the visitors' parking lot behind the school, Tohsaka Tokiomi's black Bentley Continental was nowhere to be seen.<p>

In truth, Rin hadn't expected to find it in the first place. Mifune City was a good fifteen kilometers away from Fuyuki, and it was doubtful that her father would spare the time to personally drive the distance while the War was still ongoing, emergency or not.

Was it one of her father's enemies, then? She thought that she might have caught a faint reaction from her compass a bit earlier, right before Ms. Itou had come to collect her - but the device had since fallen silent, and her suspicions were left unconfirmed. Surely an enemy that intended her harm would be employing magecraft of a detectable magnitude, though?

As a magus, Rin's skills were as yet unpolished, but she knew that in the event a true threat presented itself, there wasn't any use in becoming flustered. Preservation of an analytical calm could lend even a complete amateur a chance of prevailing against the most difficult of odds. As heiress to the House Tohsaka, it was her duty to respond to all challenges with composure and elegance.

"I know you're here," she said, gripping the gemstone keychain she carried in her pocket in case of emergencies. "Unless you think that an elementary school student could defeat you in straight fight, you might as well show yourself."

Magi carried themselves with a degree of pride. It was an inherent part of the culture - and no dedicated practitioner of thaumaturgy would let pass an insult to the fruits of their labor. If she could just get the enemy to expose themselves, there was a chance that she'd contribute to her father's victory in the War ...

* * *

><p>Were Rin's opponent the sort of magus she imagined, the tactic that she chose might have provoked precisely the anticipated response, for good or for ill.<p>

The man she faced, however, was not possessed of the typical hubris of the thaumaturgical academia. The sin that shaped _his_ every action was the serpent called _necessity_, and in the miracles that he wrought, he found no ontological worth or beauty. Even the unique mystery that had engraven his epithet in the whispers of magi everywhere was to his mind but yet another tool, to be used or discarded as the situation called - and a young child untrained in any form of combat was hardly a situation that required magecraft to be brought to bear.

It was thus that Tohsaka Rin's prudent monitoring of her golden compass yielded no warning whatsoever as her assailant made his move. With a soft discharge of compressed air from somewhere across the lot, a tranquilizer dart containing a low dosage of incapacitating agent was suddenly planted in the girl's neck; and unceremoniously, she collapsed to the pavement.

Holstering his weapon beneath his trenchcoat, a man emerged from behind a parked van and brought a mobile phone to his ear, expressionlessly gazing downward as he walked over to the girl's prone form.

"The target has been apprehended at Route C," said Emiya Kiritsugu. "I leave the cleanup at your discretion."

* * *

><p><strong>UN-AEC Fuyuki, 02:37 PM<strong>

The skills of those who served the Committee could not be compared along a single dimension. Each agent fulfilled a sufficiently distinct function that there was no great meaning in assigning scores of general capability across the board. But fit of credential was only one qualifier for selection; and in the end, factors such as personal history or prospective role in the Committee's plans were accounted for in task assignment.

For all of her considerable talent, Ikari Yui was not the best and the brightest to have taken to the field of Metaphysical Biology - and strictly speaking it wasn't actually her discipline of expertise. Why, then, had she been the one summoned to lead the Fuyuki Response Team?

The issue had plagued her since her orders had arrived. It was obvious that she was being put through an examination of a sort, but there was nothing about the assignment itself that suggested a compelling justification for her involvement specifically - and it was uncharacteristic of the Committee to issue a straightforward assessment of competence without personalization.

Things hadn't begun to add up until an automobile-mounted camera that she'd set up to monitor the first procurement site had registered the face of a phantom from her most painful of memories.

The Magus, he was called - a mercenary and assassin known for his ability to bypass the best of security precautions, as if by magic. On an overcast, rainy afternoon nine years ago, her father had begged him for mercy on her behalf, kneeling on the muddy pavement besides the burning wreckage of their sedan. As she looked on, paralyzed in fear, the tall, dark stranger had fired his pistol, splattering the contents of her father's skull across the street.

Slowly approaching her then, he'd looked into her eyes and said, "Forget what you've seen here."

But there was no way she could forget the emptiness of his gaze; the gleam of the flames along barrel of his pistol. Etched at the core of her being, the figure of the Magus had a some point become to her the embodiment of all the sins in the world - and her participation in the Grand Work was purposed ultimately to forge a kinder reality in which such men could never come into existence.

For her ideals, no sacrifice was too large.

The Chairman knew all of this, of course. Yui could sense his hand in the tailoring of the scenario she now faced - a subtle accounting for her idiosyncrasies - and that alone hinted vaguely at the objectives she was presumably expected to fulfill. Kiel Lorenz had, after nine long years, presented to her her father's executioner on a silver platter, and he would be evaluating her every reaction in context of task performance. In very simple terms, it was a test of character.

'The question is,' she thought, swiping her ID through an elevator card-reader, 'what sort of response does he deem acceptable?'

* * *

><p>In the course of her training, Irisviel von Einzbern had been taught that anything attainable by way of magecraft was definitionally possible in its absence. She'd long accepted this as a fundamental postulate of her practice, but not without a certain unvoiced skepticism. As far as she had known, the non-thaumaturgical sciences had never replicated even the most basic staples of magecraft - the direct reshaping of solids via transmutation, for example. The claim at face value was rather difficult to accept.<p>

Her skepticism, however, was now in the past tense.

The hexagonal chamber that she had awoken within was about the size of a small auditorium, with surfaces of bare cement and a mirrored observation window on one of the walls - a bit like an operation theater that Kiritsugu had once shown her a photograph of. Its original purpose was difficult to discern, but aside from the portable outhouse and the two beds that she and the still-unconscious Saber respectively occupied, the corners of the space had been furnished with a series of machines connected to plexiglass vessels. Suspended within in orange fluid, twitching, eyeless fetuses linked by the hinds of their skulls to thick black cables continuously generated a resonance within the environmental mana.

There was no prana being converted or released; and no attempt was being made to utilize the reverberation to achieve any sort of coherent magecraft - but by some principle beyond Irisviel's immediate area of familiarity, spell invocation within the room was blocked by what appeared to be a purely mechanical action. It felt as if the mystery of Alchemy itself was out of reach.

Tastelessness of instrumentation aside, as a bounded field formulation, it approached genius - and as far as Irisviel could tell, it had been achieved without so much as a basis in formalcraft.

Hours of fruitless experimentation had yielded only the conclusion that she would be unable to escape under her own power; and it had occurred to her that even if she did, the katana-wielding Servant that had captured her in the first place was presumably lying in wait somewhere beyond the walls. Saber, who might've been able to brute-force an exit, was still unconscious from prana deprivation, and the resonance seemed to be interfering with her recovery as well.

With such resources at their disposal, why had the enemy chosen merely to incapacitate?

"It's called jamming, if that's what you're wondering," said a feminine voice from a speaker installed near the observation window. "If a broadcast is rendered unrecognizable due to static, it can't very well be used to trigger a response, no?"

There was a person standing in the window, which had become transparent - a smiling young woman wearing a white laboratory coat, standing before a microphone.

"I have to apologize for the state of your accommodations," she continued. "We'll have something more comfortable set up for you in the staff dormitories soon, so please bear with us for the moment."

The window was only eight or ten meters away, but with the bounded field in place, Irisviel found her senses incapable of reading anything meaningful about the girl's presence. Going by mannerism, however, there was a distinct mismatch with what Irisviel had expected of the enemy Master. Kiritsugu had reminded her time after time that judgments with tactical consequences shouldn't be drawn from appearances alone - but it was difficult for Irisviel to mentally connect the girl's general bearing with authorship of her and Saber's current circumstances. Perhaps she was an assistant? She looked like she could hardly be out of gymnasium.

"What is it that you want with us?" asked Irisviel, thinking to keep things straightforward.

"A number of things that can wait until later," replied the girl. "For now, I just need a bit of information from you, regarding the man that arrived at the scene of our engagement shortly after we retrieved you. Japanese, maybe thirty-five to forty years of age - a bit unshaven? We have reason to believe that he's an acquaintance of yours."

Kiritsugu. She was looking for Kiritsugu.

"I'm afraid that you'll have to be a bit more specific than that," replied Irisviel, carefully schooling her tone and expression. "There are a number of people fitting that general description who might have a reason to come looking for me, and I'm not on particularly familiar terms with all of them."

The girl's smile dropped a bit.

"There's no need to be so guarded, Miss," she said. "Despite what you may believe, I'm not your enemy, and you have my word that it isn't my intention to harm or otherwise inconvenience you or your friend. I really must have this information, though, and I would appreciate it immensely if you could help me."

"My answer hasn't changed," said Irisviel.

The girl sighed.

"I'll be back to check up on you every few hours, to see to your meals and so forth," she said. "If you remember anything of use - even if it's just a nickname, or part of a contact number - please mention it."

The girl gave her a nod, and the window abruptly reverted to a mirrored surface, leaving Irisviel to the silence of her worries. There was no shaking the feeling of offness about the situation; and the girl - Master or assistant, or whatever she was - hadn't taken advantage of her position of obvious superiority to extract information regarding Kiritsugu. Instead, there was all of this low posturing and _politeness_, as if she were merely playing hostess. It didn't make any sense.

'She didn't seem very concerned about the threat that Saber potentially poses to this atelier, either,' thought Irisviel, sitting down on her bed. 'If it isn't that she's confident in the security measures they have set up, then she's absolutely certain that the Servant can neutralize us if we become a problem.'

Aloud, she whispered to herself, "There has to be something that I can do. I can't become a burden ..."

* * *

><p>Beta-Five was waiting for Yui in the corridor, holding his helmet at his side. Seeing him, she smiled and ruffled his pale, silky hair with a hand. For all that he physically appeared a teenager, he was in many ways far from maturity.<p>

"You shouldn't worry for me so much," she said. "So long as the Noise Blanket is active, they won't be able to harm me."

A bit reluctantly, the boy nodded his acknowledgement.

"Do you have anything to report?" she asked.

"Seven surveillance units classifying as Type:Sepias have crossed the proximity within the past three hours," he replied mechanically. "None have lingered unnecessarily, and per your orders, I have kept primarily to desynchronization. I was unnoticed."

Yui permitted herself to grin.

"It seems as if our practical trials are getting some results, then," she said. "I think we're just about ready to see how well you fare against an actual Type:Green ..."

* * *

><p><strong>Shinto, 04:48 PM<strong>

The signal was a directed pulse of prana, too faint to be sensed outside of its trajectory.

"The preparations are complete, my lord," said Tohsaka Tokiomi, bowing slightly.

Archer, garbed in his full armor, stepped to the corner of the rooftop and looked downwards.

"And this is what passes in this era as a residence of the nobility?" he asked. "Unsightly, Tokiomi. Truly unsightly."

"Lancer and his Master have selected the building crosswise from us as their base of operations," said Tokiomi. "It doesn't appear to be a proper atelier, but their defenses are fairly robust."

Archer sneered.

"It wasn't necessary for you to indicate the ruffian's position to me, Tokiomi," he said. "I can smell his stench from here." The air behind him began to distort, forming a fluid, golden surface. "As for these meager fortifications - they cannot withstand even the strength of a child."

From the golden surface, a silver dagger with a series of slots cut along its upper edge emerged. It wasn't a Noble Phantasm that Tokiomi was familiar with, but to his memory it roughly resembled a medieval swordbreaker. With a glare that Archer directed at the visual haze of the building's bounded field, the blade shot forth with a high-pitched shriek.

Tokiomi had expected that the weapon would tear or perhaps simply dispel the enemy's protections. He vastly underestimated the damage that would result.

Eldritch light expanded from the point at which the dagger contacted the barrier's surface, but even as its passage sounded a thunderous crash, there was no slowing of the blade's descent. It planted itself into the wall of the building's sixth floor, generating an uncharacteristically liquid ripple in the surrounding tiles and cement - the onset of the shattering, which raced across the rest of the surface. One or more of the central supports must have been damaged in the initial impact; for the seven upper floors collapsed upon themselves like a sand castle before tide, releasing a billowing cloud of dust and glass fragments into the streets below.

"By my word, Tokiomi, you are permitted to sanction the Master before the Law of the King," said the Servant, carefully scrutinizing the spreading debris. "But for the affront that the Hound has dealt, he shall be my quarry alone. It would be sagacious of you not to intervene."

Tokiomi smiled.

"I wouldn't dream of it, my lord."

* * *

><p><strong>ASSASSIN<strong> / **Hassan-i Sabbah** (The Hundred-Faced Hassan)  
>master: Kotomine Kirei<br>gender: ?  
>attribute: Lawful Evil<br>strength: C  
>endurance: D<br>agility: A  
>mana: C<br>luck: E

The 19th leader of the original order of the Hashshashin, prior to its decimation before the forces of the Khan and its subsequent reformation. The only one of those who took up the mantle of Hassan-i Sabbah without undergoing surgical modifications of the flesh, or truly attaining an assassination technique that could be considered to fall within the domain of Zabaniya.

Originally one of two candidates selected as successors to the seat of leadership, he was chosen in favor of his rival for his moderate political stance and his self-sacrificing patriotism. However, he served his people in truth only out of sheer sense of duty - and not because he himself desired it. Though he never regretted his service, near the end of his life, he loathed himself for the inhuman existence that he had become - the "Sword Drawn of Stone."

Due to the nature of his skills and abilities, the Hundred-Faced was the only Hassans permitted to retain the flesh of his face upon the succession of the mantle. However, by the time that he took the seat, he could no longer be certain that the face he wore was in fact the one he had been born with; or even that he was male by birth.

**Skills:**

**Presence Regulation** - Rank A+: Ability to freely regulate the magnitude and quality of exuded odic presence within a range of human expressions, with coverage of the pranic signatures of typical magi. Unable to replicate presences approaching divinity. The Great Grail is unable to differentiate this skill from **Presence Concealment**.  
><strong>Drawn of Stone<strong> - Rank A+: With application of extreme concentration, the Servant is capable of skeletal and muscular manipulation to the end of assuming an impressive range of distinct builds and physiques. Utilized with make-up for purposes of infiltration. Nonequivalent to the skill "**Self-Modification**," as nothing is actually being altered.  
><strong>Expert of Many Specializations<strong> - Rank A+: B-Rank proficiency in up to 32 different fields of expertise; a broad cross-section of academic knowledge and professional skills obtained so to plausibly assume identities of all functions and social classes. The Servant has fragmented his personality to better organize his knowledge.  
><strong>Librarian of Stored Knowledge<strong> - Rank C: Photographic recollection of experiences, including information consciously unacknowledged. Requires a successful _Luck_roll.

**Noble Phantasms:**

**Zabaniya** (False) / **Delusional Illusion**  
>rank: B+<br>type: Anti-Self (Support)  
>range: 1<br>targets: 1  
>An inaccurate summation of the skills the Servant obtained in life, distorted by legend. Rather than permitting the alteration of his appearance and mannerisms as they originally did, the Servant's fragmented personalities are capable of attaining individual and separate existences. No longer bound by the physical limitations of the Servant's flesh, the variation of appearance from personality to personality has significantly increased. Up to 80 distinct iterations may be manifested at a given time, though some personalities are incapable of expressing themselves. Exchanges of flesh are possible with mutual consent between personalities.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Codes for Synchronization Frequencies<strong>:  
>Distinct from odicpranic signatures, which are related to magnitude rather than frequency. More comparable with Servant parameter ranking, but still not a good match.

**non-Typed**: Background synchronization level, containing most normal humans. However, this is actually a non-zero value. Berserker in his normal state falls here. In an early coding system developed by Fuyutsuki Kouzou, this was known as "Autistic Mode."  
><strong>Type:Red<strong> ~ **Type:Sepia**: Blanket classification containing the majority of familiars, magecraft, and human magi. Generic supernatural phenomenon.  
><strong>Type:Orange<strong> ~ **Type:Yellow**: Unusually strong synchronization events, including High Thaumaturgy. Most Nephilim and Servants fall within this bracket. Events upwards of Orange are often considered the domain of the Super-Solenoid, but this is erroneous. As of 2015, Angels with AT-Fields that read as Type:Orange or Type:Green are considered highly irregular.  
><strong>Type:Green<strong>: Unusually strong synchronization events. Typically indicative of a low-ranking Super-Solenoid event. Activation of Enuma Elish in its lowest setting is a Type:Green event.  
><strong>Type:Cyan<strong>: Berserker with Mad Enhancement, or utilizing AT-Field manipulation. As of 2015, Type:Cyan is no longer considered distinct from Type:Blue, but it is theoretically a lower level of synchronization. In actuality, the Great Grail of Fuyuki falls within this category - but data concerning its activity is filtered from readings performed by the UN-AEC.  
><strong>Type:Blue<strong>: The domain of the Angels. Hypothetical as of 1997. Indicative of a state in which Gaia is no longer able to recognize the synchronizer as distinct from itself, even though individuality is strongly manifest. In this state, phenomenon can be realized purely by willpower, without energy cost or sanction by any external force. Incidentally, if synchronization falls to a true zero, the individual is no longer capable of maintaining their existence as a distinct being.

* * *

><p><strong>Spell invocation event flow in standard Thaumaturgy<strong>:

a) **Preparation**: Prana collection.  
>b) <strong>Command Phase<strong>: Prana directed at "target" spell by circuits; chants/invocation/rituals utilized as psychological focuses for specifically formatted prana exertion toward the target.  
>c) <strong>Registration Phase<strong>: Registering or recognition of prana exertion pattern within Thaumaturgical System (which has no distinct physical location, as it is part of the World itself; however, it is carved into the World by a physically extant Grand Ritual known as a Foundation.) System accepts payment of prana. Details of phenomenon deployment locale are usually included within the communication between spellcaster and System.  
>d) <strong>Execution Phase<strong>: Submitted prana is utilized by the System to assert phenomenon against the resistance provided by the Counter Force.

Technically speaking, the "Registration Phase" occurs in a higher order of reality that is the domain of souls. However, this is a domain that environmental mana exists in, overlapping with physical reality in at least part of its coordinates; disturbances in environmental mana can have an influence on spell recognition.

Secondarily, a construct whose existence is maintained by any sort of thaumaturgy is ultimately tied to the System, which identifies the location of phenomenon deployment and asserts the effect there. Entities such as Servants are less "objects" and more "phenomenon," even if they bear the ability to independently maintain their substantiation on a limited level; if the System (in this case, the Great Grail) that backs them up is unable to recognize their existence, then various processes and functions can no longer operate as normal.

Very few magi are capable of executing magecraft without the support of a Thaumaturgical System external to their own existence. Of course, those who possess a Reality Marble may find it easier ...

* * *

><p><strong>End Snippet.<strong>  
>Draft: Jan 11th 2011<p> 


	11. Bluebeard

**Solenoid Flux**  
>An Evangelion  Fate Zero Crossover Concept  
>Snippet #11: Bluebeard<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Tuesday, March 18th<strong>

A small puddle of dark bile stained the ground before his sneakers. Attempting to catch his breath, Kariya grimaced at the squirming chunks within. In his tenure as a war correspondent in the Balkans, he'd seen his share of parasite-infested refugees. He possessed no formal training in medicine, but practical experience with volunteer work at various Medecins Sans Frontieres camps suggested a high probability that his condition was terminal. How much time he had left, though, was difficult to gauge.

Over the bubbling of the park fountain nearby, Kariya heard an inhuman growl, and noticed Berserker poising himself defensively before one of the walkways leading away from the plaza. An odic signature that he hadn't noticed in his distraction was slowly approaching - and it was a familiar one. In the distance, he could hear the regular tapping of a cane.

"Stand down, Berserker," he said.

At his command, the armored Servant backed off, but didn't relax his guard.

"I have to say," said Matou Zouken, stepping into view beneath the orange light of a lamp illuminating the path, "I'm impressed by your showing so far. It was rather beyond my expectations that you would play your opponents against each other to compensate for your Servant's weakness. At this rate, you might actually have a chance at winning the War."

Kariya tiredly glared, thinning his lips.

"What is it that you want?"

Zouken cackled, striking the brick-tiled ground with his cane.

"Merely to convey a few words of encouragement where deserved," he replied. "As an author of tragedy, you're quite accomplished. Good to know that you've inherited at least some of my character. If I were aware of it beforehand, I might've had you try for an Assassin class instead."

With theatrical frailty, the vampire hobbled forth, stopping before Berserker and scrutinizing him with a calculating smile.

"Going by his performance versus the King of Knights, this Servant of yours isn't quite as weak as I imagined, either," he said. "Humor my curiosity, Kariya. You now have a fairly respectable amount of power at your disposal - but as you're quite aware, the worms lodged in your skull are set to trigger a hemorrhage should the notion of turning on me cross your mind. How do you regard your situation, precisely? Does it fill you with feelings of warmth? Or impress upon your heart a deep appreciation of my unconditional love for you as your progenitor?"

And there it was: the 'Know thy place' - a not-so-subtle reminder that Kariya had been living the high life for far too long, and should be reacquainted with his true station in life. Once upon a time, the appropriate response might have been rage - but he had long exhausted himself of any true heat toward his father. All that remained now was a sort of helplessness and empty despair, tempered by hope of a better life for Sakura.

"Go home, old man," he said softly. "I'll win you your goddamn Grail."

Matou Zouken responded with a snicker before turning away.

"Remember, boy," he said, facing the shadowed path. "No matter how far apart we are, I'll always be with you. You cannot deny the bonds of blood and family."

In silence, Berserker looked on ...

* * *

><p><strong>Wednesday, March 19th<strong>

Seated in an armchair in Kariya's living room, Berserker opened his eyes.

It looked to be roughly mid-afternoon, and his Master had apparently dozed off on the couch. The news program on television was going on about some plane crash in Russia.

Experimentally, he stretched. No noticeable pain - and no real sensation to go with the unhealthy-looking splotch of dried blood across the abdomen of his torn uniform shirt. That was good news, at least; his regeneration had gone off without a hitch. With a slight burst of intent, he reasserted the original structure of his clothing, musing at the curious sensation as the cloth mending itself over his skin.

Repairs completed, he stood and walked over Kariya, prying the remote from the man's fingers and turning off the television. There were several empty cans of Yebisu Beer at the foot of the coffee table, and Berserker sighed slightly on noticing them. Drinking this early in the day wasn't a habit that he really approved of.

'It's the first day that Kariya's taken off in awhile, though, and I shouldn't deny him the smaller pleasures in life,' he thought, picking up the cans and heading towards the kitchen. 'At least he doesn't have a hot water penguin as a pet.'

As Berserker deposited the cans in the recycling bin, the reddish-brown stains on the mess of paper towels in the trash caught his eye.

'He never intended to tell me about the worms,' he thought with a frown. 'He said that he needed the Grail to save his niece, but he wasn't gonna mention that he's practically killing himself to obtain it. He didn't want me to know exactly what it was that his father was doing to him ...'

Berserker had been vaguely aware of the worms' functions before, but he'd naively presumed that if Kariya didn't mention them explicitly, he knew what he was doing, and they weren't a big deal.

Last night had proven things otherwise.

With the increased energy demands of Mad Enhancement, it had become obvious that the creatures weren't simply supplying Kariya with prana - they were consuming his flesh in exchange. Before the fight had even really begun, the man looked as if he were on the verge of collapse. Potential effectiveness in defeating enemy Servants notwithstanding, the tactic they had employed was definitely not a trump they could afford to play often.

It was a good thing Kariya wasn't aware that Berserker could recall the events he witnessed in his altered state of consciousness - or else he might not have learned of the man's burden at all. It wasn't entirely a miscalculation on Kariya's part, in truth. Even to Berserker, Mad Enhancement was a bizarre creature, not at all fitting the expectations he'd arrived at from his experiences of Unit-01's episodes of rage. Perhaps because it was more a product of his legend than any real attribute of his original incarnation, the expression of the class skill merely reduced him to a combat machine that faithfully and unreasoningly executed orders. More than a little, it reminded him of a less unpleasant version of the Dummy Plug System.

'But thanks to that, I've got a better grip on what I can do to help Kariya,' thought Berserker. 'If he's unable to even think about betraying his father, then I'll just have figure out how to do it for him ...'

* * *

><p><strong>Shinto, 04:50 PM<strong>

The attack came without warning, and by the time Sola realized what was happening, Diarmuid had set her down gently in the dust-filled alleyway behind the building. With a forceful swing of the Gae Buidhe, he cleared the air within their immediate proximity.

"A projectile from beyond my range of detection," observed Diarmuid. Turning toward Sola, he asked, "Are you capable of combat, my lady?"

"I ... I only have access to the three spirits I recruited last night," she said, somewhat shaken. "The ones from London aren't obligated to come to my aid halfway around the world."

He sighed, and then froze. Abruptly pushing Sola behind a trash disposal unit, he deflected a bronze straight-blade that had been launched in their direction with the shaft of the Gae Buidhe.

"Mongrel and bitch, preparing to elope into the night, I see," drawled an unfamiliar voice. "Truly, you're a suited pair."

* * *

><p>At the opposite end of the alley, the figure of a blond man in full-golden armor casually strode forth from the haze of the dust, apparently unarmed. Despite this, Lancer could identify no obvious openings in his stance, or any visual indication as to how the Noble Phantasm been fired.<p>

"Unfortunately for you, there is no escaping my authority as King," the man continued, "and you are long overdue for sanction before my laws."

Behind him, a surface of light shimmered into existence, eerily illuminating the relative dimness of the alleyway. The ends of a dozen or more assorted weapons simultaneously pierced the fluid plane - and Lancer noted with rising alarm that each and every one was roughly a C-Rank Noble Phantasm.

"Run!" he shouted at Lady Sophia-Ri.

Panicked, the woman started at a stumbling run - and it was milliseconds later that the summoned weapons shot forth.

There was no room for doubt; no time for Lancer to do more than acknowledge that his Lady had deactivated her circuits - presumably to make herself less of a target. Almost as instinct, his body moved, cleaving through the metal of the oncoming projectiles with the tip of his spear. One attack was not enough. Again and again, he slashed, until nothing was left of the barrage. To complement its ability to disenchant armaments, the wide blade of the Gae Dearg had been reinforced to facilitate weapon destruction - and once again, it had served Lancer well in its purpose.

The obliteration of so many Noble Phantasms should've intimidated the enemy - but to Lancer's apprehension, the metallic fragments that now littered the alleyway provoked no apparent concern. Instead, the self-proclaimed king regarded the Gae Dearg with a sneer, and Lancer reassumed his opening stance. He had no means of ensuring the Lady's safety from other potential assailants, but at the least he could prevent the Servant before him from pursuing her. Hopefully, she would reinstate communications if she encountered any danger.

"The dual-pronged form of your weapon isn't intended for melee combat, I take it?" asked the gold-clad man. "Or is this a different Noble Phantasm altogether? It hasn't the same presence as the spear I last encountered."

A dual-pronged spear?

"I'm afraid that I don't follow," replied Lancer - but in fact, he could roughly guess the course of events that had led to the enemy's offensive. It seemed that another of Assassin's machinations had borne fruit.

"Feigning honor in the face of death, hmm?" The enemy smiled. "You're as much a fool as your former Master, then. Presented with a choice of dignity or survival in his last moments, he chose the former - and died like the dog that he was."

Lancer tightened his grip about his spears.

"In my presence, you shall not baselessly slander my lord."

The armored Servant briefly chuckled, and the surface of light reappeared at his back - manifesting a larger arsenal of weapons than he'd previously employed.

"You believe that I speak in jest, mongrel?" he asked. "The one to put down your dear Master was none other than my summoner - Tohsaka Tokiomi. As witness, I assure you: The method of execution was as demeaning as it was well-deserved. You've seen what was left of the corpse, have you not?"

The proper strategy would have been to retreat - to see to Lady Sophia-Ri's escape, as enough time had passed for her to be beyond the enemy's immediate range - but Lancer was not so entirely a creature of rationality. A rush of anger brought him to a sprint, and disregarding that the enemy was ostensibly of a higher order of power, his mind was set to the singular task of seeking a weakness to exploit. In reply, the enemy crossed his arms before his chestplate and let fly a second barrage.

Attempting to avoid the projectiles by astralizing, Lancer encountered the same resistance he'd experienced at Assassin's ambush.

'A bounded field,' he thought, deflecting several swords with the Gae Buidhe. 'Subtle enough that I didn't notice until now - and I can't very well dispel it without locating the anchors.'

The weapons - now B-Ranked and more difficult to destroy - replenished in far greater quantities; and even as Lancer applied both of his spears to defense, cuts and tears began to form across his clothing and skin. This wasn't a war of attrition that he could afford to drag out. Clenching his jaw, Lancer switched to defending entirely with the crimson polearm in his right hand, launching the Gae Buidhe at the enemy's exposed face with a well-timed throw.

The short spear missed its mark. At precisely the right moment, the gold-clad Servant avoided impalement with a slight tilt of his head - but much as Lancer had expected, there was slight dropoff in the onslaught of the projectiles. It was enough for him to close the distance, earning him a number of injuries as he thrust the armor-piercing point of the Gae Dearg in attack. The barrage concluded.

"Twice now you've missed, mongrel," said the man in the golden armor.

Somehow, the enemy Servant had caught the shaft of the Gae Dearg in his left gauntlet, guiding it away from his body quickly enough that the edge of the speartip left only a scratch across the armor at the side of his torso. Firmly gripping the polearm, he delivered a forceful kick to Lancer's chest, tossing him against a wall and into a trash heap a number of meters away.

Even as the pain of a cracked rib made itself known, Lancer smirked at his strategic triumph.

The phenomenon through which Archer delivered his attacks was an incomplete sorcery that would collapse if severed from a source of prana - and in Lancer's experience, spellwork of such complexity required an amount of preparation that would prevent immediate redeployment in the circumstance of cancellation. Deprived of his unending supply of weapons by the Gae Dearg, the threat that Archer posed was now greatly reduced.

"No, Archer - I struck true," said Lancer, panting heavily as he heaved himself afoot. "Without a means of bombarding me, you've lost your advantage."

For a moment, Archer's face blanked. Then, as if he'd heard a terribly humorous joke, he began to laugh heartily.

"By the Rivers," he said between chuckles. "You're proud of this! ... You actually believe that by closing the Gates, you've obtained some sort of victory at my expense!"

The Servant of the Bow tightened his hold about the Gae Dearg, and there was a brief burst of prana. Before Lancer could even think to demanifest his weapon, its blade and shaft had shattered to shards of wood - dissipating to motes of light before they struck the ground.

There was no longer any mirth in Archer's expression.

"So long as I hold the Key of the Kingdom," said the gold-clad Servant, materializing a key-shaped short sword in his right gauntlet, "I am able to open instances of the Gates of Babylon as I will it." With a theatrical swing of the key-blade, Archer again manifested the golden distortion behind him. "The achievement for which you are so laughably proud is the destruction of a single instance, of which I can produce any number." The red blade dematerialized. "And if you believe that a sharpened stick might permanently deprive a King of his treasury, you are incurably deluded."

Lancer opened his mouth, but was unable to find any words. A branch of the Tree of Manannan - destroyed as if it were a mundane wooden implement. As a Noble Phantasm, the Gae Dearg ranked only at B, but shattering a weapon crafted by a divinity shouldn't have been so easy. The figure before him was a monster in the guise of a man.

"It confounds me," continued Archer, "that a supposed Heroic Spirit could demonstrate such unyielding faithfulness to a common magus of this era. Your late Master was not even worth the smallest fraction of your undoubtedly meager legend - and yet you defend his memory, like well-trained canine. Have you no shame?"

'This is the end of the path,' thought Lancer; and in death as in life, he had failed. Even if Lady Sophia-Ri were aware enough of his quandary to reactivate her circuits and heal him here and now, there was no overcoming Archer.

Thinking to at least verbally one-up the enemy one final time, he muttered, "I don't expect that one such as yourself would know the worth of loyalty."

Archer visibly bristled at the comment.

"Rejoice, Lancer, that I am a most benevolent King," he angrily declared. From the fluid golden surface, there emerged a ceremonial longsword with an intricately decorated inset along the flat of its blade. "In my unlimited mercy, I have deigned to eradicate you with such thoroughness that the Throne of Heroes itself shall never again recall your disgraceful existence."

As Lancer grimly looked on, Archer snapped his fingers, and the sword was let fly ...

* * *

><p>Reinforcement was unfortunately an area of Thaumaturgy that Sola had neglected in her training. A purely academic magus had no need of such skills, she'd once slothfully rationalized - and in those days, critical matters of life and death had been oh-so-distant. It was too late for regrets, though; and in the here and now, activating her circuits even to provide prana to Diarmuid was probably equivalent to putting up a beacon for the enemy to strike down at range.<p>

Incomprehensibly, the Master of Archer was keeping pace with her all-out run at what appeared to be a leisurely stroll.

"Please, Miss Sophia-Ri," he called, only fifteen or twenty meters behind her. "If you would just agree to cooperate, I swear that I shall do everything within my power to ensure your safety."

It was almost certainly a lie.

Tohsaka Tokiomi was a smiling sociopath who concealed his utter absence of scruples behind a veneer of gentlemanly politeness - a particularly common breed of man in the high society of the Clock Tower, and one with which Sola was uncomfortably familiar. Through Diarmuid's eyes, she'd personally witnessed his handiwork.

At the collapse of the Cassis Circumdant, her familiars at the Grand Hyatt had lost Kayneth and Tohsaka to pranic disorientation, and it was an hour later than an anonymous tip led the police and media to the remains of the defeated party - "a British diplomat by the name of Archibald," according to the local news channel; "the latest of the serial killer's victims." Diarmuid, incensed at the report, had visited the police morgue to confirm the truth of it - and laid out across an autopsy table, he found a blood-drenched mess of dismembered flesh and bone, with bits of a face just intact enough to positively identify. For all of his insensitive idiocy, Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi had not been so evil that he deserved such a fate.

Sola had very little desire to be taken into the hospitality of the House Tohsaka.

Pushing over several trash cans near the end of an alleyway, she entered a suspiciously deserted street - huffing as she took stock of her surroundings. There should have been pedestrians about so close to rush hour, but she hadn't seen any since Tohsaka initiated his attack. He'd most likely set up a bounded field around the district to keep mundanes from getting in the way, too far beneath her detection threshold for her to notice - but if that were the case, there was a distinct chance that he wouldn't pursue if she crossed the perimeter into a more heavily populated neighborhood.

It had occurred to her to summon Diarmuid to her side, but second thoughts stayed her hand. Calling across their connection before she was reasonably safe would only burden him to protect her in a potential engagement against two opponents rather than one - and that was assuming Archer didn't just snipe her the moment Diarmuid ceased to occupy his attention. Her sole recourse was to escape under her own power - and without the use of circuits, she was forced to draw upon resources that she'd reserved as a last resort.

'Should've had the foresight to prepare several more of these,' she thought, stooping behind a parked Toyota a ways down the street and looking to the rooftops. 'If nothing else, this should slow him down a bit.'

It was an advantage of Spiritual Evocation that expenditure of prana was non-mandatory in the practical applications of the discipline. Unlike familiars - which were extensions of a magus' being - properly contracted spirits were independent, self-intelligent entities, and in exchange for a prenegotiated compensation, they would perform assorted services. For purposes of a direct offensive, the contracts that Sola had secured the night previous would be all but useless before a man who could destroy wraiths merely by clapping his hands - but there was more than one way to skin a cat.

"Kamaitachi!" she shouted, right as Tohsaka stepped into view.

Technically, it wasn't necessary to invoke an entity by name, but Sola found that it helped to focus the mental commands she communicated. The Kamaitachi was a minor nature spirit, local to Japan - a faerie of the wind whose physical form resembled a weasel, capable of slicing metal with its razor-sharp tail. At her call, a number of smooth cuts appeared through the cement of a utility pole at the man's side; and overhead, the supports of a rooftop billboard were diagonally severed, dropping it into the street.

Face shaded from the twilight by falling debris, Tohsaka smirked. It was the last thing that Sola noticed before ducking for cover; and nearly in time with the multi-ton impact, she'd sat herself against the vehicle's rear bumper, squeezing her eyes shut and covering her ears. The resulting sound was much duller than she would've expected, but in the fallout that followed, the body of the automobile was noisily pelted with fragments of cement and blacktop. When the brief metallic staccato ceased, she peered over the top of the car to study her handiwork.

Much as she expected, bent metal and shattered cement piled where she last saw Tohsaka - but there were no telltale bloodstains, or any other indication that Tohsaka had been buried alive.

"I ... I won?" she asked. Had she succeeded where Kayneth had failed?

Slow footsteps approached from behind, and Sola spun. Several meters away, Tohsaka Tokiomi stood uninjured at the center of the street. The fabric of his bespoke suit remained crisp and pristine - entirely unblemished by her attack.

"I apologize for my insensitive handling of your fiance's remains, Miss Sophia-Ri," he said, smiling disarmingly. "As you're understandably agitated, I shall take no offense at your actions against my person. I would, however, advise that you consider a parlay once you've somewhat cooled your temper."

Sola was prevented from replying. Before she could open her mouth, a brilliant light had filled the street, followed shortly by a deafening, thunderous crash. On impulse, she shielded her face, and hesitantly lowered her arms only when it seemed as if the new development wasn't threatening.

Amidst crackling electrical discharge, a chariot drawn by two immense bulls had come to a stop where Tohsaka had been standing. By some means, the well-dressed man had evaded, and was now standing at a safe distance, frowning as if slightly irked. For a moment, Sola thought that Rider had come to her aid, but the person at the chariot's reins was not the hulking brute of a man that Lancer had described. A nervous-looking boy with tears in corners of his eyes looked warily to Tohsaka before offering her his hand.

"C-c- come with me if you want to live," he stuttered.

Waver Velvet?

* * *

><p>The certain demise that Lancer anticipated hadn't arrived. Instead, his vision was filled with the fabric of a red cape, billowing in a unexpected gust as electricity arched across the walls and pavement. The King of Conquerors stood proudly before him, holding the tip of Archer's projectile between two meaty fingers.<p>

"No, Archer," said the flame-haired man. "You're the disgrace." With a casual toss, he lodged the longsword in a nearby wall. "A king that spits upon another man's loyalty is no king."

Unamused, the gold-clad Servant fixed Rider with a half-lidded glare, and with a wave of his hand, he summoned forth a veritable arsenal - an array of weapons far more numerous than Lancer had previously faced.

"You would doubt the legitimacy of my rule, King of Conquerors? The mercy of my Law?" drawled Archer. "Devotion to a man of inconsequential worth cannot be considered loyalty - merely a malaise of the mind. And how, besides to put it out of misery, would you receive a hound that so feverishly pines after its deceased master?"

Lancer made to retort, but without turning, the larger man stopped him with a gesture of his hand.

"I would give him a meal and a place under my roof," Rider replied, "and by no means would I deny him his dignity." Slowly drawing the spatha at his side, he directed the tip of the blade in Archer. "That's /my/ Law - and if you insist on doing things your way, you'll find that your sovereignty doesn't extend quite as far as you imagine."

"Oh?" asked Archer; the weapons about him drifted forward dangerously. "I'll have to rectify that, then."

"You can go ahead and try," said Rider, grinning fiercely.

With this declaration, the flame-haired giant raised his spatha skywards, and a scorching, unnatural wind filled the alleyway with a yellow haze. As granules of sand streaked across Lancer's exposed skin with tremendous rapidity, it felt to him as if his entire world were being consumed ...

* * *

><p>When the whirlwind subsided, Tohsaka Tokiomi paced through the empty space that had been occupied by the chariot and the enemy Masters - narrowing his eyes as he studied the sand-strewn blacktop.<p>

'The supposed theft of El-Melloi's original catalyst may have been a fabrication, then - arranged to conceal Velvet's collusion with his plans,' he thought, frowning. 'Presumably, they knew of Iskander's attributes, and positioned Velvet to serve as Master so as to provoke underestimation. Teleportation was to be their final trump.'

As with the crimson lance before it, the phenomenon that had mediated the enemies' sudden departure couldn't be discerned via the Master's Perspective. The Grail-granted augmentation was sadly not the asset the clan records had made it out to be; and enemy parties of the current War were irregularly skilled in obscuring intelligence without the use of Presence Concealment.

Still, Tokiomi was observant enough that he could hazard a deduction at the underlying mechanics: At the least, it involved remote spatial manipulation on par with High Thaumaturgy, achieved either by invocation of a Noble Phantasm or some heretofore undocumented skill with magecraft on Iskander's part; Velvet wasn't so skilled a magus that he could reproduce near-Magic independently.

'I've revealed far too much of my hand,' he thought, looking back upon the footprints he'd left in the fading, phantasmal sand. 'It would seem that I've done the remnants of the El-Melloi camp a disservice in taking them so lightly ...'

* * *

><p>Alone in the empty passageway, Gilgamesh flexed the fingers of his left gauntlet.<p>

Like the weapon he sought, the Noble Phantasm that Lancer wielded hadn't an antecedent within the Gates of Babylon - but the dual-pronged lance he'd encountered at the opening of the War seemed nowhere near as fragile, and likely wouldn't have shattered with the application of a low-level prana burst. There was a definite discrepancy in the presence exuded by the two weapons, and Lancer's toy felt distinctly unfamiliar.

"Should've known better than to trust Tokiomi's judgment," he muttered to himself. "The puppeteer behind the attack was most certainly another."

* * *

><p>The desert extended to the horizons.<p>

"Wh- where are we?" stuttered Sola, gaping at the sight.

The tall, well-built man standing beside Lancer gave a hearty chuckle.

"Welcome to battlefield of my heart, young lady," he said. "I believe you sorcerous types would refer to this as a Reality Marble. Very handy if you're creative with its applications."

A Reality Marble - a World Egg born from within a soul, wherein its creator was effectively a divinity. Amongst the magi, the human use of such was regarded as a myth with little basis in fact - but Heroic Spirits were larger than life; more than human. It was their nature to live beyond the bounds of humanity. Sola now stood beneath a different sky.

Materializing the Gae Buidhe in his less-injured arm, Diarmuid positioned himself protectively before her.

"And what is it that you hoped to achieve in bringing us here?" he asked.

"Not to intimidate, believe it or not," replied the larger man. "I have a bit of a business proposition for the two of you." He gave a wide, toothy smile. "How would you like to get your hands on the Holy Grail?"

* * *

><p><strong>UN-AEC Fuyuki, 05:01 PM<strong>

According to the sign near the gates, the laboratory was property of the United Nations Artificial Evolution Concern.

The name sounded vaguely familiar to Berserker, and he thought he might have seen it mentioned in a history textbook at some point - or perhaps the NERV pamphlet? Either way, who it was that operated the lab wasn't a large concern at the moment. Somewhere beneath the plain-looking building, the entity that he'd come across while scouting was inexpertly concealing its presence.

'A non-human AT-field,' he thought. 'And not the only one ...'

* * *

><p>In the darkness of the sewers, a robed man with bulging, fish-like eyes smiled.<p>

"Fear not, my Divine Maiden," he declared. "Your faithful servant, Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, has arrived, and he shall stop at nothing to deliver you from the host of the Lord!"

Within his hands, the Prayer Book of the Sunken Spiral City glowed ominously ...

* * *

><p><strong>Weapons from the Gates of Babylon<strong>:

**Phersephassa** (Archetype) / **Maiden of Stillness**  
>rank: B+ (A++)<br>type: Anti-Unit (Anti-Fortress)  
>range: 1 (1~99 as projectile)<br>targets: 1  
>A child's dagger intended for self-defense, gifted by the goddess that came to be known as Thesmophoros to her young daughter; a conceptual weapon. The blade is imbued with a divine curse that momentarily dislocates targets from the concept of "movement" - but as all things exist in a state of continuous flux, the "stilled" object is very briefly subjected to an immense inertia, resulting in collapse. Targets are designated by the mind of the wielder, and may range from living entities to nonphysical existences such as spell effects. With increased energy consumption, the effect of the curse may be applied to larger-scaled targets.<p>

**Vaitarna** / **The Blood-Darkened Waters of Oblivion**  
>rank: EX<br>type: Anti-Unit  
>range: 1 (1~99 as projectile)<br>targets: 1  
>A ceremonial longsword resembling a khanda, whose blade is inset with intricate relief images depicting war and peace; a conceptual weapon. The blade dates from the dawn of the Age of Divinities, and its original wielder is unknown. Those that die by its edge are said to be annihilated from the cycle of the World - erased from the memory of Alaya. Merely as physical weapon, the strength of the Vaitarna is equivalent to a Rank B+ Noble Phantasm.<p>

(Note that it's only "said to" have such an effect. The actual, observable effect is removal of records and memories regarding the victim, much like Jack the Ripper's Information Erasure. The only person who remembers the victim is the killer; and whether or not Alaya itself recalls the victim is unconfirmable. It doesn't erase the information from the Throne of Heroes, which exists independently of time and timelines)

* * *

><p><strong>End Snippet.<strong>  
>Draft: Feb 8th 2011<p> 


End file.
